Karolína Netolická – Vertical Horizons

Exhibition Vertical Horizons charts the creative journey of Karolína Netolická, whose work has evolved in recent years from small drawings in micro-pencil through large-format compositions in dry pastel to ceramic objects and reliefs created directly in the landscape. Just as the medium and format change, so too does the perspective through which Karolína views her work—from an external, socially and philosophically grounded viewpoint to a much more intimate and physical perception and experience.

In this exhibition, Karolína Netolická explores precisely this movement—the vertical represents the desire to relate to something that transcends us, while the horizontal represents the inner need to merge with what anchors us. Vertical Horizons are thus not opposites in her conception, but two positions of the same gesture. A reminder that the hunger for the unattainable and the desire to connect with what immediately surrounds us stem from the same source—not to be alone in this world.

Karolína Netolická (*1993) graduated from the Higher Vocational School of Applied Arts in Prague and then studied in Jiří Petrbok’s drawing studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she graduated in 2022 and received the Critics’ Award for Young Painting. In her monumental compositions, for which she has chosen dry pastel as her almost exclusive medium, she explores the existential isolation of modern humanity and its disrupted relationship with nature. Her visual language is distinctive, among other things, in that she uses darkness as the primary building block in her paintings—not as a symbol of anxiety, but as a space of silence from which the visible is born. In recent years, her work has shifted from an external, socio-ecologically grounded perspective to a much more internal and physical perception. She also works with ceramics and creates three-dimensional objects—plaster reliefs that are created directly in the landscape.

More information here.