CGD

Silver and gilded pendants, earrings and rings duplicate virtual drawings generated as a "by-product" by the Swype application, which is commonly used, beside other things, to speed up written online conversation. The sweep of a finger on a touchscreen turns abstract lines into a concrete word. The designer transforms the patterns via 3D printing into wax models, then casts them manually and either adjusts or polishes them to the form of the final jewels. This is the formal aspect of Eliška Lhotská's latest collection. The aspect of contents touches upon the state of mind outside virtual reality and is a personal report on the omnipresence and illusiveness of virtual reality and the permeability of its boundaries. An excerpt from Eliška's authorial text speaks for itself: "Your alabaster face reflects the moonshine, your eyes burn from the blue light of the display. Pins and needles in your right hand, dilated pupils; you do not perceive anything but the constant rattle of your keyboard. A rose is as perfect as its red color which absorbs you. You want to touch it and it is drawing nearer with your every touch, and yet it is still so distant. A piercing pain in your right hand, a cramp like a thorn wakes you up to reality. The blue light falls and fades. A crack, a slash of the present on your perfect world. What was passing you is offline now. The Spirit Offline is a state of mind. (...) A virtual world. It surrounds us. Where does it begin and where does it end? Concealed behind the mask of perfection, everything real is forgotten. The Internet, the freedom catching us in its net. It forces us to love delusion, to live the lives of others and to honestly hate." One of the words Eliška selected for her collection is QWERTY; others are identity, present, my mind, gold, vision, fire, virtual reality, I am a bird, rose, teleport, year, community, bread, together, reality is comfort, mountains... To her, working with this system of signs is a possibility to create an endless array of generated words and sentences, and thus also an unlimited number of design forms and meanings.

Danica Kovářová