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Klüber Gallery, Weinheim, Germany, exhibition “Inside Out”, curated by Reinhold Weinmann (curator and art historian)

Julie Machallová is currently working on architecture, nature and man with her paintings. You may have discovered it or read it in the titles of the works. There have not been any architectures shown here. It contains the most famous houses of modern times. The series includes Villa Tugendhat in Brno and the Farnsworth House – or the Barcelona Pavilion – all architectures built according to plans by Mies van der Rohe. All are architectures of functionalism.

She chooses a narrative style for the representation of these architectures, just as she often gives poetic titles. As a reminder, the architectures seem to emerge from an undefined natural environment. The artist creates this impression by presenting the architectures in all details, but then blurs the outline with a wide brush – a kind of film still emerges.

People are present before or in it, and they are not. It is the visitors who today revive these architectures for the short duration of their presence. These houses have long since become museums. She puts the famous architectures into an interesting matrix. On the one hand, Machallová traces the life that the building knew in a snapshot, a moment of research. On the other hand, it shows the field of tension in which these houses are today – on a border between private and public space. The architecture understood as something exterior – a shell that comes before something interior – somewhat limited to the outside – but what is that today and what was it before?

This gives these works a different, purely personal meaning for the artist – and at the same time for all of us. Julie Machallová works sensitive moods that tell of the quiet experience of these architectures.