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The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes

Live, create and travel. Perhaps these words could be used to describe the main driving engine (or motto?) of textile artist Mária Fulková

The title of her current exhibition The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes is a quote from the text by F. L. Wright. Fulková appropriated Wright’s words as a metaphor of her continuing joy of travel, which does not consist in achieving the goal, but above all in the people she meets along the way, in changing scenery, in discovering the unknown, which gives her new strength. Another well-known quote comes to mind: We do not travel to escape life. We travel so that life doesn’t escape us.

The attraction of the exhibition is underlined by the sensitive design of Palo Choma, which transforms the gallery’s intimate space into a small “sketchbook” in which we can wander together with the author for a while. Just a finger on the map, though.

The exhibition forms part of a longer cycle of chamber exhibitions Think with Drawing with the subtitle Drawing in Applied Art and Design, which will be introduced in 2022 by the NOVA Gallery, the oldest art gallery in Slovakia.

Mária Fulková as a modern nomad who likes to discover new places, works and creates always where she is. It is extremely open to new stimuli and opportunities and has no problem packing up and going on the road at any time. Mostly travels alone, preferably by train and lightly (with the most essential in the backpack). On her “expeditions” she is willing to get wet, freeze a little, touch the bottom and feel what artists have been going out into the world for for a long time: intense experiences and maybe even a better knowledge of themselves.

During the last two decades, Fulková presents her travelling “trajectories” to us in the most elementary way – through drawings. At a time when most of us – tourists of the 21st century, mindlessly overwhelms with photos of smartphones’ memories, Fulková records his experiences seemingly anachronistically – with a pencil or pen in small sketchbooks that are on the road is a permanent equipment. They include portraits of random passers-by, scenes from cafes, stations and ports, images of the flowing landscape captured from a train or bus, sketches of various visited dwellings or buildings.

Fulková manifests here as a sensitive observer, able to record authentic snapshots and the atmosphere of the place, enchantment with urban life and varied human types. The opposite pole are minimalist sketches of natural scenery, whose character can be depicted with a few strokes in the drawing shortcut.