Patrik Sevcik
Drawings of Marek Duska

Since graduation in 2003, the work of Marek Duska, a graduate of the Department of Graphic Arts within the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Academy of Arts in Banska Bystrica (Slovakia) has proceeded through several expressive transformations. Our aim is not to observe the entire work but to focus on his recent work.
In his 2006-7 series he focuses on the study of the human form. In the study he chooses representational style of sketching which, when enlarged to 70x100cm, gains a different dimension. The series of drawings, itself, is not homogenous but is evolved. It is an exploration of various forms of artistic process. Physicality, as a dominant theme, evolves into an emotional expression. Fragments of the body are used to express momentary emotional frames of mind. Clenched hands, cringing figures; their identity is hidden; hollow figures often delineated by a simple contours… these are different methods of expression presented by Marek Duska. The body is exaggerated, seen from above or below or parts of the body blown up large to focus the attention on non-verbal human expressions. The hand is explored to show gestures symbolic of desire for touch, the need to explore things, to have a protective grip, or firm support or to seek a connection. This approach to drawing the linear contours testifies to an academic mastery of proportion and the anatomy of the human body. The artist captures the temporary nature of gestures with a dynamic, even nervy, drawing using quick strokes. In some works this is supported and complemented by painting filled with movement or an intense background changes the balance of the painting.
Monochrome figures work with painted background to help the linear drawing to stand out more expressively and are also suggestive of comics, bringing a sense of action.
Monochrome pieces are given vitality by colour when the silhouette of a female figure is filled with drawing or spray paint is applied. Spraying though stencils presents a silhouette of a moving figure with hollowed out identity. Arresting and visually interesting works are represented by this series, where banal themes and phenomena are presented using detail, such as bubbles blow which carries elements of pop art.
The works are filled with woven fragments of the human body and rats, where the artist also plays with colours and expresses hurt and feelings of danger or even comedy.
Often a solitary figure in some emotional frame of mind focuses attention on the emotional states of loneliness and emptiness.
In his current work he uses drawing that monumentalizes the human figure. A shortening of perspective of a dejected body acts like a preparatory sketch for a monumental sculpture.
In a special series of pieces the artist revealed identity, where author depicts a person close to him in different positions: from silhouettes with a focus on some details to entire images in a childish dreamy situation. The artist makes a union of drawings with collage from drawings. As the author says: ‘the collage of my own drawings enables me to create new compositional
combinations and new stories.’
Duska uses this ‘muse’ also in other series, which are tied to this early work and create ‘comics’ drawings contrasting the pain of a body with hardness and dynamism of machines (cars, motorbikes, … ). Expression of machines in slightly deformed shapes makes the image more dynamic and emphasizes the frailty of the body. For such expression with deeper meaning he purposefully uses a type of drawing, ‘whose airiness enables motives to be laid on each other’ (artist). At first, the laying of drawings makes an unidentifiable web of lines but at the same time every single layer is perfectly liable. Machines, representing hardness, sturdiness, and coolness, are in connection with emotionality and sensibility of the human body and both are laid on each other. With regard to previous works aime3d at dejection expressed with gestures of limbs, at this stage Marek Duska conspicuously and purposefully works with contrast. At the same time he refers to a ’hardness’ and speed of age, a pace of life that often borders thoughtlessness and absence of emotionality.