Karolina Bielawska, Kateřina Ondrušková, Monika Žáková
Curated by Mónika Zsikla
"Soft, Hidden, Exposed" presents a selection of recent works by three young emerging Central and Eastern European female painters. The different creative positions of the selected works can be related to each other through the concepts of Soft, Hidden and Exposed and the associations these concepts evoke. The works of all three artists are characterised by the softness that emerges from behind the structures, the hidden references revealed by motifs, and the exposed use of forms and figures integrated within the pictorial spaces.
Polish artist Karolina Bielawska (b. 1986) uses various techniques and painting materials such as bituminous masses, plasterboard, enamels and varnishes in her artworks. Her pieces often push the classical painting boundaries toward installation. Bielawska’s distinctive use of black and blue hues, curved and angular abstract shapes and structures are often based on architectural and local historical prototypes. Some of which include architectural motifs from iconic Polish modernist villas built between the two World Wars - the arches of balconies and staircases, along with many other details. The asphalt and industrial paints she uses in her abstract paintings can also be interpreted as references to the inspiration of the architectural models.
Czech-born Kateřina Ondrušková (b. 1991) works with natural motifs in her paintings, with an emphasis on flowers. Her deeply personal art is primarily inspired by cultivated nature and built gardens, sceneries which she fuses with melancholic fragments of memories. She often combines close-ups of the referred natural formations and flower gardens with figures that mysteriously emerge or disappear into the background, scratched into layers of paint. The superimposed, overlapped, hidden and translucent layers of images do not only expand the perspectives in Ondrušková's pictorial spaces but also allow the viewers to come up with intuitive interpretations, bringing narrative stories to life.
Another Czech artist Monika Žáková (b. 1987) emphasises in her creative practice on the precise elaboration of themes she works with. Her distinctively minimalistic, meditative, clean surfaces are backed by art historical references such as the historical trompel'œil painting, which was essentially a form of representation that sought to mislead the eye and vision. Žáková is also fascinated by the connections of meaning associated with the interaction of materials, especially in the form of canvas and paper. However, aluminium, sheet metal and plaster are also materials she is often known to work with. In recent years, she has created remarkable combinations jesting between the borders of classical paintings and fine reliefs. In the artist’s own words, her works “push the boundaries between surface, space, image and object through the act of creation."
— Mónika Zsikla
