The artist finds inspiration in abandoned places, where the erosive effects of time serve as a metaphor for the transience of memory. Her paintings are delicate and fragile, yet they evoke a sense of unease. The painter draws us into liminal spaces that create the illusion that we are lost somewhere “between worlds.” The omnipresent silence and solitude give us the impression that something is not quite right here. The artist reflects on the concept of vague terrain, which describes abandoned, neglected, or temporarily unused areas. In her compositions, we find environments that are functionally ambiguous, ever-changing, and difficult to categorize—ones that defy traditional categories of urbanism. The more we try not to lose control, the more we lose ourselves. Jelínková captures the lyricism of places that lie outside the main center of attention.

The painter strips the picture plane of superfluous elements in favor of the overall effect and color relationships. She focuses on finding unusual combinations and absurd details in seemingly ordinary spaces. Her paintings thus evoke much more complex and ambiguous interpretations, in which the viewer is unsure what still stems from observed reality and what is already the artist’s imagination. She describes her aesthetic strategy as civilian archaeology. This can be compared to Walter Benjamin’s “ragpicker,” who collects everything that is forgotten, worthless, and overlooked. Jelínková, too, finds hidden value in neglected objects and uses them to construct new perspectives on the world. She examines the traces of time—its tectonics, accumulations, layering, and overlaps—for example, by interconnecting objects and architectural elements from various historical periods. 

We are confronted with fragmentary scenes of places marked by the subtle yet distinct touch of history. The artist sensitively works with the motifs of destruction and neglect. In his essay The Ruin, Georg Simmel conceived of the ruin as a dynamic relationship between human order and the entropic force of nature. Jelínková substitutes nature for the very principle of time itself, which transforms human creation into a new aesthetic form. A ruin is not merely a remnant of the past, but a crossroads where human desire for form collides with the inevitability of its subsequent decay. Decay, however, is not a disruption of reality—it is its very condition. Reality does not constitute a harmonious, logically ordered whole, but rather a mixture of contrasts and imbalances that seem incompatible yet together form a common essence. In Jelínková’s work, reality is not purely factual; it is imbued with imagination, memory, and unease. Deserted scenes, oscillating uneasily between tension and a strange calm, bear silent witness to the distortion of the lived past. 

The artist blends an unsettling experience with meditative contemplation in solitude, when one does not wish to be disturbed by anyone. This contradiction is well expressed by the term “public solitude,” which Ivan Vyskočil uses in the context of dialogical interaction at the intersection of psychology, therapy, and theater. It refers to a state in which an actor on stage is fully immersed in himself, while being able to completely ignore the presence of the audience. In Jelínková’s work, the subject even becomes permeable, that is, permeable and permeated. What is outside (the world, other people, reality) penetrates inward (thoughts, emotions, consciousness), and vice versa. The “I” is no longer an autonomous, closed unit, but rather a product of the forces that pass through it. Some may see this as a tragedy; others, as a Zen-like reconciliation with chaotic existence. Jelínková belongs to the latter group.

Renata Jelínková (*2001) is a senior at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studying in the Drawing Studio under the guidance of Alice Nikitinová and Matěj Smetana. During her studies, she also worked in Professor Thomas Eggerer’s studio at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München. She studied at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ostrava (Painting II studio led by František Kowolowski and Jiří Kuděla). In her paintings, she explores themes of collective memory, the fluidity of memories, and the distortion of lived experiences. Time plays a fundamental role in her work—its documentation, visual expression, and the awareness of its transience.