The exhibition of Mgr. Matúš Novosad, PhD., painter, curator, art theorist, and critic, presents a selection of works from 2019–2024. A graduate of Klaudia Kosziba’s studio and a doctoral graduate from the Department of Art Theory and History at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, he collaborates with the journal Glosolália and currently serves as an assistant in the Delta painting studio at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. His work is dedicated to contemporary painting, exploring its connections to the past while focusing on painterly script and the broader concept of artistic script.

It is no surprise, then, that Novosad’s exhibition at the Záhorie Gallery of Ján Mudroch focuses on drawings—where the artist’s script, the fusion of visual thought and the hand, emerges in its purest form. Drawing is often reduced to preparatory sketches, diary entries, compositional drafts, or records of exploration, recalling the original Greek concept of ichnography. Novosad aligns himself with this foundational idea of drawing as a process of searching, tracking, extracting, and pulling (drawing) vision through marks (Zeichnung) that define spatial zones. He does not seek to categorize or prioritize different types of drawing. Instead, his approach is transversal and polycentric, traversing all divisions of drawing without imposing a hierarchy among them.

One might, however, raise a doubt: does Matúš Novosad not, after all, present us with a form of division in drawing? For instance, the classical division based on drawing media? And indeed, it seems that in 2019, black watercolor drawing prevailed, followed by charcoal drawing in 2020–2021, then red chalk drawing, and finally ink painting-drawing. But on the other hand, all these media-based divisions are monochromatic and interwoven both within and among themselves. Or is this not merely a division within drawing but also a division between figurative and abstract drawing?

And indeed, Novosad’s drawings convey to us—or, as Marcel Proust might say, translate from appearance into duration the various ways in which figures can be articulated: first, as figures emerging from clusters, and second, as figures formed by the clusters themselves in relation to the background. Yet some figures appear as residual “errors” (deviations) or fragments, seemingly losing their recognizable context, though each of the autonomous drawn lines retains it within its own memory of drawing in two modes: one resonant with the history of drawing, the other autonomous and self-contained, reconstructible from its authorial ontogenesis.

These drawings, unfolding in a state of duration, Novosad is inclined to refer to as abstract, though perhaps they are merely informally informative. In any case, they are not Deleuzian figural drawings, those that deform shapes or figures or merge them with the background. But where, in this case, the unifying force of drawing emerges. How do we identify it? How can we understand it? This is where the transversality of Novosad’s drawings comes into play. Each of his exhibited drawings is based on a multiplication of viewpoints, anticipating that it will reveal itself through characteristic lines of various lengths, curves, rounded shapes, semicircles, diverse densities, and gradients of intensity—striving for coherence and a sudden incision through all connections and alliances, yet equally longing for freedom and release. For this reason, they cannot be classified as figurative, abstract, or even figural. The tension and pathos of these drawings are governed precisely by the transversal and eventful, the generative, the explosive-implosive unfolding. They flow, contract, explode, disperse in various directions and shapes, and then seek their own distinctive cluster again.

Ultimately, Novosad himself organizes the exhibited drawings into certain iconographic units. While the frequently mentioned transversality prevents assigning a distinct name to each individual drawing, it does not preclude grouping them, arranging them into differentiated categories under titles that allow for multiple graphic interpretations: private, portrait, love, motherhood, eroticism, bathing, suffering, war… These categories support transversality, for they can be drawn both as states and as the genesis of forms in their uniqueness and multiplicity.

They take on a different shade in a reduced number of lines, where their cohesive forces may represent a Madonna, and another in multiplication, in the fireworks of pentimenti, incomplete arcs, undulating rhythms, labyrinths of unexpected density that defy boundaries—leading us out of the figurative illusion and proclaiming: we are not a Madonna, but rather states of unrepeatable and infinite maternal love, offering everyone a choice. And perhaps we are something more—perhaps, the very source of life itself in all its forms. Follow and seek our traces, for this act of discovery, of lines drawn deliberately yet in multiple directions, is the very essence of drawing.

If I were to add yet another division of drawing—one that has already been hinted at between the lines and through allusions—it would be that drawing has a life of its own, one that intersects with life beyond drawing. The first is pictorial, while the second is proto-pictorial, offering an unfinished and fleeting imagery that either speaks to us or fades away. This is why it is crucial to continually explore the life of drawing, to open doors for it (Hebrew dlat or proto-Semitic delet), so that extra-pictorial imagery may engage with it, offering paths and possibilities for fusion. This is what Matúš Novosad pursues in various ways—perhaps even in Atelier Delta.

Marián Zervan