Human existence is bound up with the presence of other beings, we learn the ability to sustain ourselves in the world and refine our sensory organs for the perception of reality. Understanding something that seems foreign, ugly, familiar to us and that mirrors our identity. We are changing every moment and we are also changing our surroundings. It is important not to lose sight of the importance of our lives and the impact of the individual on the greater whole. We all perceive and react to the stimuli and influences of the places closest to us.

Dagmar Šubrtová is an artist whose practice is based on pure material sculptural work. She was born in Duchcov in northern Bohemia and has been living and working in the Kladno region for a long time. For Dagmar, an artist and curator, her work is mostly site-specific (i.e. she creates original work directly for a given place), where she tries to experience the matter and space together with its transformation. Her artistic work is inherently linked to the post-industrial character of the landscape, where coal was or is still mined, and the impact of mining on its surroundings.

In Dagmar Šubrtová's works we can observe two basic thematic lines that are vividly intertwined. One reflects on problematic issues of concrete reality, invites contextual thinking, encourages the expression of a value position and conscious action. The other, more contemplative, turns attention towards the realm of individual concentration and refinement of the perception of time, space and interdependence.

The new installation Trial by Fire, created by Dagmar Šubrtová for the specific space of the Emil Filly Gallery, reflects the themes that the author has been working on for a long time through various media (installation, sculpture, photography, as well as curatorial projects). He works with the themes of the transformation of matter, the action of forces in the material plane, the transformation of the landscape after the restructuring of heavy industry, in this context he mainly points to the ability to regenerate abandoned dumps and heaps after coal mining.

Axis Mundi symbolically forms the connection of several spheres of the world, in mythology called underworld, earth and heaven. The center can be a tree, a rope, a mountain or a tower. In this installation, the centerpiece is a crystal model of a crystal representing a regularly arranged solid form of matter in which the building blocks, atoms or molecules, are grouped in a repeating pattern.