On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, at 5:00 PM, the opening reception of my exhibition Whispers of Flowers took place in the beautiful space of the Gallery of Josef Liesler in Kadaň. The gallery is located on the ground floor of the historic town hall on Mírové Square and has hosted regular exhibitions of contemporary and classical art since 1996.
I was truly happy to see how many visitors came—friends as well as people who were experiencing my work for the first time. Alongside the paintings themselves, the installation also included a projection in which my artworks were transformed through AI into gently animated scenes. The floral motifs thus gained a digital dimension, allowing visitors to experience the paintings from an entirely new perspective.
The exhibition Whispers of Flowers remains open at the Gallery of Josef Liesler until November 2, 2025. If you are nearby, I warmly invite you to visit the exhibition in person.
Below, you can view photographs capturing the atmosphere of the opening reception as well as the gallery space itself, and read the curatorial text written by Mgr. et MgA. Zdeňka Bílková.
Simona Vojtěšková / Whispers of Flowers
September 18 – November 2, 2025
Opening Reception at the Gallery of Josef Liesler
Curatorial Text
Text reproduced from the website of the Gallery of Josef Liesler
Author: Mgr. et MgA. Zdeňka Bílková
The exhibition by Simona Vojtěšková invites viewers into a world where nature, color, and memory intertwine with personal imagination. Flowers appear on her canvases and tapestries—not as botanically precise records, but as abstracted, simplified forms, sometimes merely suggested by a patch of color. And yet, they remain instantly recognizable.
This approach can be seen as a parallel to phenomenological reduction: the artist removes everything superfluous in order to preserve what is essential. A stain that is still a flower. A color that carries the essence of form. This process of reduction never results in impoverishment; on the contrary, it opens a path toward an intensified experience—toward an image that speaks directly to our perception.
Vojtěšková thus continues the tradition of modern painters fascinated by children’s visual expression. In children’s drawings, as in her own work, we find unpretentious joy, playfulness, and the courage to abandon literal depiction in favor of pure gesture. Her work exists at the intersection of abstract expressionism and naïve art, yet it is above all defined by a refined sensitivity to color—its harmony and contrast, the relationships between tones placed side by side on the canvas, and the overall mood and atmosphere of the image. In her use of color, she is truly distinctive.
The artist’s creative process is intuitive. She approaches the canvas with an initial idea, but then allows herself to be absorbed by the process itself. Sometimes a few quick strokes are enough; at other times, she may spend hours working on a single detail. She paints in layers, often beginning with an underpainting that may later be covered, transformed, or brought to the foreground. Through this layered process, her paintings gain depth and a sense of dynamic transformation.
At first glance, the works of Simona Vojtěšková may appear as visually pleasing, harmoniously colored compositions. Yet beneath this harmony lies a subtle tension—somewhere between the concrete and the abstract, between flower and stain, between the familiar and the unnameable. What initially presents itself as a “beautiful painting” gradually becomes a space for contemplation, for searching meaning, and for lived experience.
Does beauty still have a place in contemporary art? Can a painting be “just” beautiful? In my view, yes—and this is precisely what feels refreshing. In a time when art is often expected to address urgent social or existential issues, beauty itself can become a radical gesture.
The paintings of Simona Vojtěšková grant freedom to the viewer. A painting may—but does not have to—be merely an object to look at; it can be understood as a space where the viewer’s perception meets the painterly gesture. What initially appears as a decorative motif gradually transforms into a place of quiet resonance—between what is visible and what remains unnamed. It is precisely within this openness that the strength of the artist’s work resides.
Photography:
Jirka Hub, Petr Kozelek, Jiří Vojtěšek
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