About the Nature Spirited exhibition:
“It seems to me that the Natural world is the greatest source of excitement: the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.“ David Attenborough
In celebration of the intelligence of each living being, Nature Spirited continues Irene Antonez’s exploration of microscopic worlds and psychedelic realms.
Each painting presented in the show is a micro-universe in itself, introducing the viewers to Antonez’s vision of the infinite universe as an entity that is reflected in each organism on this planet. Through her surreal, colorful, multiscaled artworks, the artist invites the viewer to immerse themselves into the constantly self-reshaping flow of fungi and plant worlds. Antonez practices art as a means of her curiosity about the ever-becoming and ever-changing nature of plants, fungi, and other tiny organisms that we miss on a daily basis.
Mushrooms, plants, lichens, shells, slime molds, and flowers all represent individual entities that have their own character and spirit. Antonez describes her artistic process as a cooperation with the spirit of nature where creator and creation are no different from one another, but are indeed part of the same flow.
One of the distinctive characteristics of Antonez’s work is her unique way of playing with combinations of various scales and layers to draw attention to the importance of tiny microscopic creatures in our world which is becoming increasingly disconnected from its natural origins.
About the artist:
Irene Antonez is Prague based multimedia artist and art educator. She creates surreal, dreamy, often psychedelic-looking paintings with a focus on fungi, microorganisms, and the plant world. Her main areas of interest are microscopic research of fungi & plants as well as ethnomycology, ethnobotany, and old scientific illustration books. Some of the recurring themes of Antonez’s work are the consciousness and intelligence of the natural world, the micro-macro cosmos we are part of, the balanced interconnectedness of all living organisms of any size or scale, as well as such processes as metamorphosis, symbiosis, and „plant-thinking“.
Irene Antonez holds two master’s degrees in Fine Art and Future Design from Prague City University. Antonez’s paintings are in private collections in the USA, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, and more. Her work has been exhibited in numerous group & solo exhibitions, art & music festivals. “ Nature Spirited ” is her third solo show.
