An Energy Figure Created in Photoshop, Galerie Dukan, Leipzig (2016)

The works in An Energy Figure Created in Photoshop, all of which were completed in 2016, explore the connection of the almost universal visual symbolism of the world’s spiritualities with the dialogue between the latest technology and the more traditional painting methods. In an attempt at painting „the world of fine matter“ the exhibition makes use of a variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion and psychoanalysis to interpret freely various religious iconographies and the ritual, symbolic and philosophical roots of art. Matuška draws heavily from the history of imagemaking, from modest and utilitarian devotional images and diagrams that help illuminate and spread spiritual leaders’ ideas to Ver- rocchio’s and Leonardo’s The Baptism of Christ to De Chirico’s metaphysical art to various street and animation artists. But as his cartoonish gures absorb the visualizations of the tantric ows of the life force, the saints’ golden disks of halo and the physical bodies made of three or four non-physical bodies, with aim to resolve the contradictory conditions of lived reality and the modern spirituality, Matuška treats the acutely observed subject matter with his usual wit, visual and verbal puns and general lightness in the many senses of the word. The painting that most of all resembles a ghostlike figure of Death raising its hands against you is titled “Nordic Walking”.

– Michal Nanoru