Fotograf Magazine

May 23 – June 20, 2014

In 2014, Kateřina Zochová graduated from Vladimír Skrepl’s studio of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague; she chose Fotograf Gallery as the venue to present her diploma work, entitled To Lose Something Every Day. She started out studying illustration in Pilsen, and at the Academy in Prague she subsequently departed from a rather descriptive style, gravitating towards a free manner of expression. A scholarship in Taiwan then brought about further inspiration, and another one-year long residency at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague helped her to discover a focus on single film frames or photographs. Throughout this time, she has mostly worked with series and cycles of photographs, slides or with film language, mostly using animation. Alongside her visual work, Kateřina also pursues music, working as a multi-instrumentalist, incorporating vocals, spoken word, and playing the harp or electronic instruments. Her work mostly uncovers some kind of a story, but one which is non-linear in nature. This is also the case of her diploma work – her defence cites that “a story is always implied through silences in seeing.” According to the judge of her diploma work, Karel Císař, reality as recorded by Zochová is “fragmented, stripped of an unambiguous meaning.” Gap and absence are thus used as a “semantic element”, whether in separate works using the process of collage, either between the works, or in the installation itself, adding yet another level of meaning to the works. Kateřina could not have chosen a more apt title, as each day there occurs the repetition of a stereotypical narrative, albeit a different one every day, a narrative we often learn more about from the missing pieces than from what lies directly in front of us. It should be appreciated that in her diploma exhibition the artist avoids falling into misleading verbosity, instead focusing on the individual works, presenting the series by implication above all. This minimalism is a testament of the maturity of the artist and one can therefore look forward to her future work. Is she going to focus on individual photographs, or on sound (left out from her diploma work)? Let us be surprised.

Tereza Špinková