A shadow of things that seem;
And the greatest good is but small,
That all life is a dream to all,
And that dreams themselves are a dream.

So much about life and dreams. And now to the paintings. When you're looking at them, dream with all of your strength, but keep your eyes and your heart wide open and feel free to wave your hands. If you do this long enough and concentrate, you will be like Erik, who is really good at telling dreamy, and therefore true stories. When writing these lines, the paintings are not hanging on the gallery walls yet, they are just being transported to the gallery from all over. We have already prepared the layout (or Erik has), but that is one thing–even in its most detailed form–and life is, fortunately, the other. So the adventure will start right on the spot; the adventure that you get to experience when you come.

This is just a teaser. You will surely see the intricate and elegant colorful stories of the past and present. The stories of the images and their protagonists, who, like all of us, are struggling, moving, sailing and crawling, sitting and declaring, and watching with many bird eyes, and flying, and screaming, and silently watching, and patiently assembling something just to break it afterwards... The theatre of the world, the theatre of the world of bigger and smaller figures of Erik Šille with a minor flaw. The flaw of a man in a machine. The man holding the brush. The man who sees, because he looks. The man who created the paintings you are looking at. Welcome to the fantastically real world of Erik Šille's paintings. Something so joyous and frightening at the same time that it evokes the urge to quote Epicurus of Samos and his garden: "Come in, stranger! A gracious host is waiting for you with an abundance of bread and water. Here, your appetite will not be whetted; it will be satisfied."

An error. A flaw, a tiny bug. And yet Erik, like his predecessor Alfred Jarry, escapes from the world of his paintings on a bicycle through the embankments surrounding the river Danube to the fields and shrubs of the floodplain forests, through the Carpathian ridges far beyond the horizon to return with a smile on his face, ready to finish the painting from his world of Marvel heroes, that are both us and him. Concentrated in the studio as a kid taking the game deadly seriously, he plays a real painting game, love game, alchemist's golden game, and the gambling game of the damned.

If you are dreaming, wake up! If you are awake, dream! All this and much more is allowed. In fact, nothing is forbidden, maybe except the slimy demon of doubt that better keep away from our doors. Let it dry out in the sunshine somewhere on the embankment, let the foxes eat it in the floodplain forest, let the pheasants manure the fields with it, let the fish...

Let's get to the description of the landscape, as that is an inevitable part of every text. The landscape is picturesque. Painterly. Ancient and always new, it will be here after us and it has been here long before us. The country of our childhood. We carry it within ourselves, and compare it to anywhere new we get around the world. "There are no strange lands; it's just us who are the strangers." Only until we project them through the land we carry within ourselves. I see the pond of Erik's childhood, where he used to play hockey in the winter, the one where his grandfather burned reed sticking out of the ice. I see a broken hockey stick. The countryside around Rožňava full of caves and old churches. The Gemer region full of frescoed Romanesque churches.

All of this certainly affects the child, encrypts deeply in his memory and comes to the surface as the ancient finds from unexplored caves. Each and every layer is written, and now it must be painted. One layer after another, in different, yet overlapping schemes. To capture the mystery surrounding us. Give it a name. That name is an image. And the colors are light. Changing and eternal. Light in the landscape. Light in the picture. Light in the eye, light in the heart. The painter slowly applies it on the canvas by his hand holding the brush. The canvas passes through the landscape as our eyes pass through it. Unlike us, the light is perfect. We are just trying to capture what only lasts a few seconds before disappearing forever to come back in another form. As we approach it, we are also moving off.

“To see is to forget the name of the thing that one sees,” says Robert Irwin. It is adventurous and striking. Everything is happening within us who are looking, within us who are depicting. That's what makes painting such a healthy activity. It forces us to constantly adapt to the new environment, at least to the light. That's what we've got all the color for, from white to black and back. Somewhere over the rainbow...

I tried a little (very little) to describe what is painted, but always come to the same old conclusion that a single painting is more than a thousand words. Yes, in this case, the description is 7,777 characters long, but not one more! Hough! I'm done, it's time to watch!

Laco Teren 

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The opening of the exhibition will also include an introduction of the monograph catalogue entitled Fortune Is Within Reach, which maps and evaluates the work of Erik Šille. The band Modré Hory will take care of the accompanying program.