The word “intersections” which Filomena Borecká chose for the title of her exhibition is associated with dynamic movement. It encompases both an extension beyond ordinary reality and at the same time an escape from it. Intersection, however, also means crossover and convergence — processes which evoke alchemical transmutation of substances. The original idea of alchemy, however, was based on the deeper principle of uniting the material and spiritual essences of phenomena — it connected chemistry with metaphysics, the scientific with the intuitive, the material with the mystical. As Carl Gustav Jung notes in his tract Mysterium Coniunctionis, the alchemist’s art consisted of separation and dissolution on the one hand and uniting and precipitation on the other. Opposing energies were thus in constant conflict until they would ultimately come together in a single unity. And this same principle applies to/underlies the drawings and sculptures of Filomena Borecká. They stem from instinctual gestures from the body, pass through/traverse the mind and thus combine physiological processes with mental experience.
Borecká visualizes the invisible. She draws as though improvising on a harp, or perhaps rather on a saxophone or oboe, because it is wind instruments that are imbued with the same energy — the same matter, if breath can be called such — as her drawings are. Breath is the prima materia, the basic substance of life. At the same time it is the supreme expression of an individual, as unique as one’s voice or fingerprints. With exhalation we give out, with inhalation we take in, during moments stress we hold our breath, excitement speeds it up, we exhale with relief, we take a deep breath before going into action… . Some of Filomena’s drawings even have originated solely during exhalation or inhalation, to which the artist yielded her creative gesture, moved in their rhythm.
Borecká’s creativity springs from the same mycelium as the drawings of the Krkonoše Spiritualists. (Incidentally, Filomena spent part of her childhood and studied in Hořice, where her mother’s family comes from.) In her case, however, it isn’t about spiritual mediumism, but artist — poetic — mediumism, as defined by Vratislav Effenberger: “In the broader psychological sense it means the mediumistic creative act during which the artist is maximally concentrated on his visions, achieving the most authentic visual forms of the unconscious psychological processes. The artistic medium, through a dialectics of unconscious and conscious powers of the spirit, verges towards a synthesis of their symbols in the sphere of real life, even though this reality is interpreted in a deeper sense than merely emprically descriptive.” Borecká is a sensitive artist who has the gift of vision, which enables deep introspection. Her work is de facto realistic, for it faithfully maps her emotional landscape. Her creativity is the authentic record of moments when matters of the spirit break loose from the constraints of aesthetic templates (Karel Teige). Her creative process, in contrast with spiritual mediums, encompases self-reflection, intellectual thought and the awareness of wider contexts. That, of course, doesn’t diminish its authenticity — on the contrary, it enriches it with a deeper philosophical dimension. Her work is of the same lineage as the output of Louise Bourgeois, Anette Messager, Karel Malich and Adriena Šimotová.
Even though the foregoing was directed primarily at her drawings, it also applies to the sculptural chapter of the artist’s work. Her sculptures carved from sandstone capture the moment of inhalation and exhalation: They are filled up with air, or, conversely, they are discharging it. They embody a Baroque dynamic. Her Gargoyles partake of the breath of manifold people and are animated with it only at the moment when the artist breathes life into them. Breath is also at the center of her purely conceptual project Phrenos Breath Bank, which she devised in cooperation with sociologists from the Eranos study group in Paris.
The work of Filomena Borecká doesn’t follow waves of fashion, but it revolves around a deep-seated faith in the depths on the divide between the unconscious and conscious aspects of an individual. Such work isn’t intended for assessments by commissioners or beneficent pats on the back by gallery directors. It is an unclassifiable and unique intimate response that eludes all currents — and that is precisely its strength.
Terezie Zemánková, September 2009