The Dogs

The work of Erika Velická invites us to seek out intimate and poetic stories, mystical rituals, and childhood memories. It reveals an honest, almost compulsive urge of the artist to transmit personal experiences. Through this, she is able to draw the viewer into the work and spark their imagination. Equally essential, however, is her use of metaphor, as well as the rawness concealed beneath the delicacy of execution. What proves compelling is precisely this complexity that Velická thematizes: what is fragile may at the same time be brutal; what is private may become shared and collective; and even within the domestic there may be something wild, untamed… This ambivalence is further underlined formally by her combination of literal and symbolic elements, oscillating between latency and directness.

The motif of the dog has appeared in Erika’s work for a long time, seemingly unplanned. Over the years it has taken on different forms, shapes, and characters. The dogs can be perceived as a diary of the artist’s emotions. Some circle, sneak, or lurk, while others resemble discarded skins. The dog is not only the protagonist of the work, but also a human alter ego—a personification of the desire to escape an assigned role.