KLÁRA SEDLO | VOYNICH'S PLANTS | 5. 4. — 12. 5. 24

The inspiration for the paintings of the strangest flowers comes directly from the Voynich Manuscript, which is a still undeciphered manuscript by an unknown author from the early fifteenth century. It is probably a herbarium or a medical-astrological book that has fascinated the painter for a long time. She regrets not knowing about it as a child. It would have excited her imagination even more than Prague Legends, illustrations by Cyril Bouda, or mystery and UFO magazines that her grandmother liked to buy.

The concept of the paintings draws specifically from the botanical section of the manuscript, which contains illustrations of unknown plants, and translates these drawings into realistic paintings with a touch of Baroque botanical still lifes. One could say that he is directly portraying these flowers.

Exploring this book not through the text, but through the illustrations, allows Klára Sedlo to take a completely new look at the entire work. Logically, the text is primarily perceived as the key to the meaning of the mysterious book, but the author decided to look at it from a different perspective. She decided to reconstruct the illustrations of plants, often simple and descriptive drawings of the strangest puns of botany, into their possible real form.

Klára Sedlo says: “It's an unmistakable feeling to draw something I'll never see, based on the drawings of someone I'll never meet.

This fact is crucial for me. As a painter, one learns this very thing over a long period of time: to look at things as if seeing them for the first time. This allows me to perceive objects, surfaces, colors, and volumes in their reality, unencumbered by the cultural or social experience that we pack on ourselves from childhood. The Voynich Plant series is my solution to the enormous puzzle of the Voynich Manuscript through its pictorial part.”

Reny Mužíková, exhibition curator