"Beyond the Body" – Jana Hojstričova and Palo Macho

Palo Macho and Jana Hojstričová  first worked together in a project called Scanning.
The two artists – using completely different means – met then to create a collection of joint works. The resulting fusion of glass and photography turned out to be highly persuasive, capable of mutually enhancing and adding a new dimension, giving both media the opportunity to complement one another and thus square their power of expression.

In her photographs, Hojstričová focused on the human body. Macho, a painter who uses glass as his medium, gave her images access to the peculiar and transparent surface of glass. Thus started a dialogue between the painting gestures and the effects of glass surfaces and structures, and the purely “factual” language of pictures that render a seemingly objective reality.

In Scanning, the topic was the human body and the traces time and events leave on its surface; the human body as a living record of a person’s life. The artists’ new joint project, entitled OUTSIDE THE BODY continues and develops this topic. This time, their compositions contain a new motif: clothes – the casing of modern-day man. This casing covers the body, protecting it, while at the same time squaring the person’s individuality. By choosing specific clothes, a person reveals a great deal about themselves. Although the body is covered, the person’s character is unveiled by the selected items. Indeed, clothes bear traces of the person who wears them. They are highly personal. They are a symbol of the individual’s intimate relationship to their specific personal belongings.

In this relationship we also share part of ourselves with them. Inside the protective cloth casing is the body, which is itself a protective casing – for the inner nature of a person, of their character, set of features, personality, psyche, consciousness, subconscious, for that intangible essence of our very self. In this second joint project, both artists aim to visualise the bond between the external and the internal, to expose the different layers that make up a person. This installation of glass photo-images is a layering of depictions of the human body, as well as a depiction of the layers that form the human body.