Johana Střížková / Sated, Cheese, Raw

Burgrave’s house at Klenová castle
15. 6. - 17. 8. 2025

In Sated, Cheese, Raw, Johana Střížková combines several levels of meaning and several media – photography, photograms, object art, and video. Transcribing the shape or structure of food into objects and photographs, she explores the relationship between food as a physical substance and food as an important source of nutrition. When making her art, she reflects the traces or structures of various foods or food products. With some exaggeration, these works can be seen as an archeological imprint of our culture, in which the collective memory of (Czechoslovak) eating is rooted.

Střížková’s art often draws on everyday reality, observations of various situations, and her own experience (she spent many years photographing food products for magazines and advertising campaigns). Companies in the food industry often try to outdo one another in making their products as colorful and shapely as possible, showing the most distinctive flavors, or emphasizing quantity over quality. Visual qualities and volume are often more important than nutritional value. The art of presenting food plays an important role in their sale.

Střížková has explored the subject of food in previous works, and continues to do so today (Standing Quickly, 2022; Totems, 2018–2022). Her art explores the consumption associated with food and looks at its traditions, including the different ways in which these customs and habits are perceived over time in response to changing social and living conditions. She is interested in sustainability, in the ability to satisfy the needs of today without disadvantaging future generations. How we make and consume food says more about our society than we can imagine. Eating is more than a custom or a social occasion. It can bring people together or keep them apart – and not just at the same table. In a multicultural setting, the various approaches to food preparation and consumption have a fundamental impact on established ways of living.

Johana Střížková frequently responds to all these ideas with a subtle sense of humor. City of Dough (2022), for instance, consists of a shapeless overflowing mass of dough seeping through the openings of some kind of object, accompanied by the artists’s almost meditative voice. Her works, such as her photographs of water drawings on paper, possess a delicate, often minimalist aesthetic, and precisely this approach (playfulness, a refined form of experimentation), combined with the important themes she addresses, makes her work so attractive.

CV:

Johana Střížková (1984) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she studied in the studios of Miloš Šejn, Veronika Bromová, and Jiří Příhoda. She spent a semester on a study exchange at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, and in 2013 she did a residency sponsored by the FONCA foundation in Mexico City. In 2016, she was nominated for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. She works with various media, including photography, video, object art, installations, and performance. Střížková has shown her work primarily at independent Czech galleries and institutions. She lives and works in Prague.

www.johanastrizkova.cz

Exhibition curators: Jolana Havelková