Like Drawing in Sand

Sand - a material of childhood, memories and drawings, yet also a substance shaped by erosion over millennia and intensively used by humans. Drawing in sand becomes a metaphor for focused immersion in creation, outside space and time. From this experience emerges the exhibition "Like Drawing in Sand", which at the Uhelný mlýn Gallery presents three artists of different generations - Marie Filippovová (1938), Milada Othová (1944) and Dagmar Šubrtová (1973). Their work is united by an emphasis on process, concentrated engagement with material, and the ability to allow intuition and chance to enter the creation of art.

The exhibition's title draws from Marie Filippovová's childhood memories in Brno, when she asked adults to draw figures of gentlemen in the sand with a stick. This image foreshadows her lifelong relationship with drawing, space and the figure, which in her work gradually dissolves into points, lines and structures. In the cycle "Movement" or the scroll "Waiting", these elements become carriers of human destinies - including the stories of migrants embarking on an uncertain journey across the sea.

Milada Othová works with ancient techniques of bronze casting into sand and lost-wax casting. She deliberately preserves traces of plaster, pouring channels and material imperfections, transforming them into part of the finished work. Her intimate sculptures are close to poetry, which the artist also pursues - both modes of expression share economy and sensitivity to the moment of creation. Some works recall archaeological finds or objects of unknown purpose, whose original meaning has been erased by time.

Dagmar Šubrtová finds artistic material in the post-industrial landscape: she collects clay, limestone, coal, ash, sands and soils from places transformed by human activity and often already abandoned. She crushes, mixes, layers the materials, allows them to crystallize and applies them to velvet. In the cycles "Bleaching" and "Space for Earth and Sky", images emerge that resemble both galaxies and nebulae as well as sediments and deposits - their reverse and obverse reveal two sides of the same process.

The exhibition concludes the Uhelný mlýn Gallery's exhibition cycle in 2026.