Getting beneath the surface – of things, feelings, people, reality, but also of images and art in general. The ability, or even the art, of seeubg the world around us – attentively, differently, creatively, playfully. These are the main themes of Alžběta Rajchlová’s graduation work.

In it, she presents a metaphorical narrative featuring images of maps for parts of the story. The narrative’s open-ended nature lets viewers get beneath the surface of the image and create their own stories within its setting. We are invited to play, to interact, to experience action, and to encounter the image under different circumstances than is usual. The painting is not a distant object on the wall, it is a horizontally installed playing board. This approach is particularly present in the last painting, where viewers create their own characters with which to enter into painting’s playing field, thus finding themselves in a laboratory in which the process of interpretation comes to life.

Rajchlová’s work combines painting with the principles of play as she searches for possible ways of taking an interactive approach to a static work of art. She draws on her experience from dramaand gallery, as well as her earlier work involving the narrative potential of anthropomorphic natural forms.