While in Prague in late 1994 the focus shifted from Baroque decorative architectural detail to gold, silver and jewelled objects (particularly the set of monstrances in the Loreto collection dating from the period of the Counter Reformation).
Although these pieces of ‘decorative arts’ cannot be divorced from the context of total Baroque orchestration, they command their own stunning presence. Decoration attains its own assertive independent stature taking it beyond embellishment – the very materiality of the object becomes indefinable (This elusiveness echoes the notion of the venerated transubstantiated host which these ecclesiastical objects house). It is the seamless a-focal totality of the Rococo, and its subsequent denial of architectural physicality that now started to fascinate Zika as a visual artist.
