Ink Magazine 2010
Academic painter, Professor Boris jirku's speech for the opening at the Castle Dobrichovice 2014
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I’ve known Katia J. Levanti now for a couple of years. I was her professor of figural drawing at Umprum in Prague, and then we were exhibiting together, as it should be, professor and his best pupil, in her new home in a new world, in New London, a beautiful city on the East Coast which was founded in the 17th century by English mariners, and ship captains with wooden houses reminding you of those brigs and clippers.
In old England they had one house with a family and in New England another house with another family. Katia is also straddling between the old and new homeland, but her angel, Daniel, she is always bringing with her.
Katia’s body of work is already extensive, and here we will see only a part of it. It’s based upon visually posed questions concerning philosophy, the sense of existence, time and its flowing, between the material and non-material, emotions and ideas, and simultaneously, their answers - infinite longing, a whirlpool of energy which in the universe is left behind by the sensitive heart, love between man and woman, and the connection between all living beings. Her fundamentally sensitive and romantic soul is attentive to the beauty of our world which in her paintings she is trying to reveal and feel; they are not concrete people in historical costume in exactly defined modern space. Katia is living in the world of ideas and is only slightly connected with everyday reality. She is forming visions of her own world where all beings are brothers, and where we are not compromised by the achievements of a devastating civilization - here there is none.
Her artistic expression, while it appears connected to the Czech tradition - there are traces of Vachal, art brut Zemankova, the intensity of Toyen - it is entirely exceptional and unique to the current streams. They are paintings truly beautiful, transcending time and space, captivating the viewer and inviting him to contemplation and peace, and concentrated experience.
Thank You.
Press
Exhibition Catalogue
"Family Values"
DOM NASCHOKINA» GALLERY May –September 2011
Moscow
Introduction to "The Golden Ones" by S.T. Griffis
2022
Katia Jiránková Levanti: the artist
Before you start turning the pages of this stunningly beautiful book “The Golden Ones”, I invite you to read the artist’s poetic description of her
painting titled Welcoming Abraxas. It is an observer’s key to understanding the spiraling, vibrating, complex, metaphysical dimensions from which she
paints.
Welcoming Abraxas
Gorgeous same as terrible
In his welcoming and rejecting
creation
With the dragons protecting
the wisdom, with the snakes
of primary energy and the bird
symbol of the Soul
The ship with the future ancestors
and the man on the little boat
observing this creation from out
of the pleroma happening
He is the mightiest self-created
being and in him is creation
afraid of itself,
He the creation and destruction
The mighty Abraxas
Katia Jiránková Levanti has entered this world to paint her experiences in both her personal and the universal realms of consciousness. As her friend,
I have never known her to waver from this passion since we first met in 2008. Even in her most graceful and gentle composition, it is difficult for the viewer to rest the eye for very long, caught-up as it were, in the
very energy spilling from the canvas.
Through her paintings, Levanti exposes her private soul. They are often deep, philosophical stories. And like the Gnostic god, the
Supreme Being – Abraxas, her paintings are magical and represent infinite power and infinite possibilities.
But lest it become all too serious, she also includes a collection of her drawings ... my favorite of which is titled:
“Golden Wine Celebration
Alchemy of indulgence and joy”
In contrast, or perhaps to compliment the complexity of her energetic, serious, color saturated paintings, her drawings are playful, light,
simple and fanciful.
Enjoy your journey through the worlds of this fine artist.
S.T. Griffis
New London, CT 2022
INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND
for "The Golden Ones" by Johnes Ruta
Azoth Gallery
In her new book, The Golden Ones, Katia Jirankova Levanti explores the metaphysical realms and physical dimensions of the collective
Subconscious through bright figurative abstracts in her imagery.
In her previous catalog book of paintings and poetic texts, Subconsciounalism, Ms. Jirankova has developed a foundation of active principles
in the depths of the mind, of its connections and communications with both the Cosmos and with Evolution.
In the history of the psychological, philosophical, and cultural development of human “consciousness,” there still remains a debate on the reality
and limits of the “mind”: what is it? Can behaviors and thoughts be original and creative ? – – or are they prompted by sensory and physical
stimulus according to existing patterns ? This dilemma is exemplified in the debate between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and remains as a divide
between the structured systems based on Freud's Rationalism and reductive Behaviorism, and Jung's more open interpretation of the patterns of
metaphysical forces which produce dreams and synchronicity, and motivate and prompt original behaviors and creativity.
Carl Jung based on his research of the Hermetic literature of older centuries, arrived at a theory of a universal “Collective Unconscious”
wherein the Mind was an individual personality connected in a vast reservoir of both negative and positive energies that also operates within
a wider network and a range of metaphysical, creative, and cultural expressions. Even Freud, in his later works, such as Civilization and its
Discontents and Beyond the Pleasure Principle, acknowledged the phenomenon he called “the feeling of the oceanic” as described by many
of his patients to him, that is, a non-rational experiential feeling of floating in, or being part of the ocean of a unity of Life and a peaceful
sensation in an limitless dimension.” With this acknowledgment, Freud recognized the coexistence of the Rational with the “Irrational”
–
in the
individual active Ego and in the conscientious Superego.
Katia Jirankova's Levanti is an adept of the alchemical principles of Jacob Boehme's 5th Element Quintessence : the combination of Gold and
Light. This is the prime Transmutation of the Soul of Life, through the processes of Sublimation and Precipitation – to the Enlightenment of
the Mind. The Golden Ones, explores these metaphysical realms and physical dimensions and deepens our modern understanding through
her bright figurative abstracts in the subtle imagery of provocative bodies. Her paintings expand our Consciousness in the stream of detailed
Hermetic symbolism in the 15th century alchemical engravings of Heinrich Khunrath, Michael Maier, and later in Carl Jung's Red Book.
Ms. Jirankova's new book contains her talented array of large oil paintings, from her concept in
which sensual anthropomorphic golden figures appear and dance, bathed in swirling fields of deeply variegated light and shadows of the
Unconscious Mind. In The Golden Ones, these entities meet in the “Spheres” – the kaleidoscope of a dense holographic universe. In
“Oceanians,” creatures morph from the waves of wild waters, “mirroring all other dimensions,” where certain civilizations appear for only
a few seconds. In “Meanwhile in the Sun,” solar deities, creatures of Abraxas, swirl, indulging their insaneness. The “Planetary Pilgrim”
flies in windy fields and far landscapes.
– –
Ms. Jirankova's paintings are an invitation to swim in the lush Golden Light of an experiential
existentialism!
~by johnes Ruta
Westville, CT 06515 USA