There is a certain collective image of the forest. Everyone thinks of the same things: trees, mountains, fresh air. However, its very existence is completely independent of the way we understand what a forest is. Everyone interprets it in their own way, Helen explores forests from a visual point of view, observing their otherness, visual difference, perceiving shapes, colors, scents, structures, contrasts, compositions, and atmosphere. She focuses on the dialogue between different twigs that suddenly reach a state of fusion. They may seem to be strangers to each other, coming from a different corner, but this does not mean that they cannot live together in harmonious symbiosis. This carries a symbolic message: the act of moving a specific element to another environment, where it coexists without problems with the new, with the other. In her works, she replaces the human view with the view of a tree - now it is the tree that takes care of the valley and becomes the guardian of the hill. That is why she depicts them in the same way as the people she portrays. The portraitist tries to penetrate the essence of the individual, and in the same way, Helen tries to understand the trees. To become trees, to be thousands of trees at once and to breathe through the thin, densely interwoven fibers of the mycelium and to experience, to gain the experience of the forest. The selfish desire to reincarnate into nature with the possibility of retaining a human mind. To know, see and feel events that escape us humans, that we cannot experience with our senses, that remain forever hidden from us. We can only imagine it. But the imagination is inaccurate. Her works are completely abandoned from human presence, so that at least one place in the world remains beyond human reach. The night belongs to trees and animals – a comforting thought. At night, there is no cutting down or shooting. Helen pays tribute to trees and plants that grow despite the adverse environment, the unpredictability of the weather, and harmful human activity, but still manage to break through to the surface.
Mgr. art. Helen Tóth * 1992, lives in Dunajská Streda and works in Nová Cvernovka cultural center in Bratislava. From 2007 to 2011 she studied at the Josef Vydra School of Applied Arts in Bratislava and later, from 2012 to 2016 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in the studio of prof. Ivan Csudai and from 2016 to 2018 in the studio of prof. Daniel Fischer. She is a three-time finalist for the VUB Bank Award for Painting (2017, 2022 and 2023) and in 2022 she was nominated for the Piero D´Amore E Colore award at the The Others art fair in Turin, Italy. In the same year she was on the longlist of the STRABAG Artaward International in Vienna. Based on the selection of the expert jury, she was chosen to participate in the 2024 Salón mladých (Youth Salon) in Zlín, Czech Republic. Her greatest success to date was her participation in the collective exhibition entitled Belvedere in Hluboká | Let it GROW again! in the Alšová South Bohemian Gallery, which was co-organized by the Belvedere Gallery of Austria. The exhibition featured such artists as Anselm Kiefer, Rona Pondick, Honoré Daumier, Edmund Gwerk, Liza Lou, Krištof Kintera, and others.
