Mimicry of Martin Salajka. Expressionism inspired by nature
Bubeneč Villa Pellé opened an exhibition by Martin Salajka called Mimicry. More than 100 striking paintings by the leading Czech expressionist dominated the walls. The forty-one-year-old artist studied in the studio of Michael Rittstein at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His work is mainly influenced by nature and life in the city. The intense, colorful paintings are as energetic as their author.
The interview with the artist was prepared by Zuzana Filípková
Your exhibition is called Mimicry. I read about you that you are often inspired by nature and even own a chameleon. How does all this relate to this exhibition at Ville Pellé?
Nature is essential to me. I am not a city person, I grew up in the village. I have always liked nature, I often went fishing very often alone to a mysterious lake called Kanada, which is not far from Jarošov near Uherské Hradiště, where I come from. Nature and the solitude there, it always sparked my imagination tremendously, that’s where the first attempts to draw something started. Then of course I wanted to be a naturalist, I drew animals based on books, so nature is a leitmotif that runs throughout my work. But it is not an idyllic, classic landscape painting. It has symbolist levels, it even slips into hallucinatory visions. This whole exhibition is such a hallucination for me. Reality is firmly anchored there, but it dissolves, it is permeated by some imagination, worlds from elsewhere. For example, there are paraphrases of old paintings or chameleons, which with their color turn into more than reality, walks around the Nuselské bridge, where all those troubled souls who could not cope with the pace of the big city fly around.
The exhibition in Ville Pellé is on three floors. We are together in the attic, where you have many works that are just scattered here and seemingly haphazardly put together. You told me it was a concept. This space is supposed to represent the human head, the mind. Could you elaborate on that?
I am quite a prolific and quite energetic creator. I had an outline in my head for how to install the exhibition here, but thanks to the curator Radek Wohlmut, who knows this space and has a brilliant way of thinking about the composition of exhibitions, we reached several units. Such a motif is that from the bottom of the gallery one climbs the stairs, where some depth opens, where there are fish, and continues to the surface, where something is already happening. There are paintings in the attic that are somewhat left over or are older works. We gave it the title Head at work. It’s a jumble of ideas that continue to develop at the exhibition.
In one interview, you said that you sometimes find it annoying that you like me divided into sometimes up to ten images at once.
If you want more…
Do you have a problem going back to it?
He does. But this year was very important for me. After some time when I was going through life a bit headlessly, I started to pay more attention to myself. I also started going to therapy. I think I need to calm down. But in the end it turned out to be the complete opposite. On the basis of various examinations, it proved that I have a strong manifestation of ADHD (editor’s note: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). And so I said to myself that I will use the dynamics on the contrary, I will burn through it. So at one point I had around 60 to 70 paintings painted, which I was completely out of. Then I said to myself, you are like this, you work like this, so go and don’t stop. I also played a lot of sports this year, and when you go jogging regularly, you gain strength and you see the principle of training, how beautifully each kilometer, each piece, gradually builds up. And it leads to a person gaining fitness and strength. And it’s the same with the pictures. Just do it for a while a day and it adds up. And also the fact that I have so much space and finances to work on things at the same time has led to the fact that the works have certain connections, even if they are from different groups. Whether it’s color or dynamics.
The column of water on the staircase, where there are also many fish in the paintings, has a melancholic effect on me.
Fish are thoughtful, they are calligraphically made. I have been painting them for a very long time, I enjoy it and I will never stop. I also go to them, and of course, when you sit on a boat somewhere in the Slapy, with a column of water under you, of course it sparks the imagination, what is there, what is swimming there. And even when I catch them on humans… I mainly catch zanders on artificial lures, so you still have to revive the lure and imagine what it’s like under the water. In the past, people in caves painted something under the pretext of hunting magic, so with me the motif is similar.
We are now on the first floor of Villa Pellé. We go from top to bottom of your exhibition. This room has the most intense effect on me. There are paintings on top of each other with the motif of flowers in a vase, and their colors are truly incredible. Did you paint this series specifically for this space?
These pictures are probably the most recent. Paint flowers, show me a bigger cliché.
A flower in a vase, that’s how every art circle starts or ends.
Yes, it’s one of the biggest cliches you can imagine. But on the other hand, we know a lot of flowers that are iconic in art. For example, sunflowers by Van Gogh, here you can also see my connection to him. But I don’t paint according to models, I paint it from my head, I think about the bouquet as an abstract painting. I understand the bouquet as an explosion of shapes, and I wanted to make the area vibrate, let the lights in there. Of course, it also has the classic theme of vanitas, which have bouquets. After all, I painted it in those lockdowns, I also painted flowering skulls, nature recycles human remains back. Lockdowns were actually a good time to contemplate death. Death is near, though I think it is far.
Let’s move on. You have two more rooms on this floor. In this one, you tackled more urban themes.
I live not far from the Nuselské bridge. Nuselský most is architecturally very interesting and also because of its turbulent historical past. I kind of believe that some energy remains and a lot of tragic, powerful events happened there. About 300 souls fly around that bridge.
And you portrayed in these pictures…
I thought about a lot of things on evening walks with the dog. At the same time, my dog left in May, so painting the parks and places around the Nuselské bridge is also a memory of him.
Now we are finally on the ground floor of Villa Pellé. Is there a theme that connects the lower room here or is it multiple different themes?
We have it named Hell and the Crowd. There are painted crowds, a hellmouth motif, there are souls that come to life in the forest. There’s a central big thing that I’ve been painting for about 7 years now, where the sun sets and something comes to life at the same time. There is also a text in this work, which is a paraphrase of Váchalová Šumava. It’s a motif of hell where animals punish people. This room is probably the weirdest, it’s also part of the urban madness. Here I painted crowds, because during the pandemic I was scared by the demonstrations that were everywhere. When I saw people’s faces that were full of everything, but not pretty things, it left a deep impression on me. I really feel that the lockdown, the situation around covid and everything that is happening now brings to the surface that people are just a grotesque mass that is constantly controlled by something low. And it doesn’t really matter if Hieronymus Bosch once painted human madness, the same madness is still in the world.
Photo: Tomáš Rubín