Jana Machatová and Peter Machata design jewelery within individual artistic programs, but also in joint exhibitions and projects. They recently cooperated in several exhibitions at home (Čin-Čin Gallery, Bratislava; Art Gallery Nové Zámky; Rona Gallery, Lednické Rovne; Magna Gallery, Piešťany; Nova Gallery, Bratislava; Rosenfeld's Palace, Žilina), and at the most prestigious international jewelry event - Schmuck in Munich, Germany.
Jana Machatová is one of the first Slovak artists who to study jewelry design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (under Anton Cepka and Karol Weisslechner). During her studies, she experienced a geometrizing-kinetic episode under Cepka's influence, however she soon shifted her attention to the topic of memory which would become the leading theme of her work. She elaborates this theme in mutually linked layers through her own story touched with optimistic recollections through commentaries which provide a bitter (or) realistic finish to sweet childhood times.
Thus, the emphasis on personal, family or fantasy memories tracks developed by medallions in laminated photography or cut silver sheets alternates with moods for a broader context. Socialist Czechoslovakia in her jewelry is displayed with various attributes such as Pioneer badges, prefabricated apartment buildings and barbed wire. Kissing politicians, Spartakiadas, "joyful" workers and "happily" playing children are tale-telling descriptions of totalitarian times; in the sense of the artist's sentimentally ironic poetics they are frequently accompanied by a luxurious golden background and bucolic blueprint motifs.
Peter Machata studied in the sculpture studio under Jozef Jankovič at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava but shifted his focus to jewelry during his studies. He perceives it as a small sculpture and he consistently and thoroughly constructs the syntax of his jewels based on the principle of relief, plastic formation and shrines. His works are subtle overlaps of jewelry and sculpting methods, as geometric and poetic abstractions were replaced by figurative metaphors several years ago.
This jewelry is imbued with elements of religiosity (or spirituality?) through the use of the iconography of the Pieta as its baseline and is further elaborated in a new, "heretical" approach in a collection of "relics" (shrines with realistically depicted fingers with rings) accenting the theme of marriage. He participatively works in the reconstruction of other artist's jewelry and involves prospective owners in a cooperative game, most recently in a series of provocative amulets/talismans. And although for a long time he mainly implemented his works in silver, today plastic/corian, which enables him to conduct sophisticated experiments with a CNC milling machine and scanner, plays a substantial role in his work.