Programme work with a textile medium is relatively unique in the context of contemporary art in Slovakia but also in the world. Only a few authors (in our region: Vlasta Žáková, Ľuba Sajkalová, Zuzana Rudavská) deliberately rejected the wide range of traditional and new media and found their anchor in textiles. One of them is Táňa Kuzmová, who with her remarkably consistent work convincingly proves not only the validity, but also the advantages of this once preferred, today somewhat displaced art medium.
We can read Táňa Kuzmová’s visual artifacts on several levels. The first is conceptual. Not so much in the original rigid sense of the word as the author’s focus on the representation of thought and her cognitive process, but rather in mastering the means that are characteristic of conceptual language; inserting a written literary text, or constructing a composition that resembles a map or an orientation plan. In Kuzmová’s drawings from an earlier period, we can again find parallels with her generational companion and the representative of the unofficial conceptual scene of the eighties, Igor Kalný. We could characterize the next level of reading as dreamy, childish, spontaneous and playful; freed from any prevailing trends or iconography of the time. This level resigns isolation, elitism and conceit of so-called high art, she consciously and deliberately avoids its intellectual burden. The legacy of this line is represented by some representatives of early European modernism, from Paul Klee to Jean Philipp Dubuffet and other participants in the Parisian art brut movement. Another level of reading Kuzmová’s artifacts is a reference to everything we understand in art as abstract. One of the first theorists of abstract painting, Guillaume Apollinaire, defined it as „the art of painting new structures from elements that were not borrowed from the visual sphere but were entirely created by the artist.“ That is why he called the works of Robert Delaunay and other Orphists as „pure art“. Kuzmová’s drawings and textiles are rather an allusion to the second wave of abstract expressionism, which has found its habitat in America and which to some extent also works with partially stylized figuration. But while Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky paint with oil, Kuzmová remains true to her medium. She patiently refines its advantages and creates an unmistakable magical world constructed of coloured surfaces and linear cobwebs.
The small studio of Táňa Kuzmová is reminiscent of an alchemical workshop. Materia prima is not gold, but textiles. More precisely, the author’s efforts do not lead to the creation of a precious metal, but perhaps to something more valuable. She has been working tirelessly on what she has believed. Therefore, the current narratives of engaged art, feminist discourse and everything that the fashion wave of recent years has brought into art are distant to her. Therefore, she is authentic and believable. And that’s why her work maybe has the potential of the highest goal of every artist: to connect with the viewer.
Robert Bielik