Double Q Gallery is pleased to present The Garden of Fragility, a group exhibition bringing together new works by three female artists from Central and Eastern Europe. The exhibition focuses on the biology of the female body and identity, as well as natural processes such as growth, florescence, and maturation. The work of all three artists is characterised by an emphasis on glimpses of softness behind structure, hidden references brought to light by the motifs, and the integration of form and reference.
Taking her drawings of human bone tissue as a starting point, the suspended installation by Hungarian-born artist Zsófia Antalka (b. 1994) is made of glass beads and reproduces the intricate patterns of osseus matter, exploring and representing biological processes associated with the female body. Bone tissue consists of cells and the extracellular matrix – it is the only type of connective tissue in the body where minerals are gradually incorporated into the (soft) material in between cells. As a result of this process, bone tissue becomes extremely rigid and resistant, allowing it to serve as the supporting structure that holds up the human body. In female bodies, the interior density of the bone tissue gradually increases between ages twenty and thirty until it reaches its maximum density. Antalka draws a parallel between this biological phenomenon with mental and psychological processes, such as the experience of individuality and the crystallisation of identity. Predominantly a woman’s sense of self-identity likewise reaches its established, mature state during this period of her life. The artist presents these biological, mental, and psychological processes as taking place in parallel: the skeletal system formed out of bone tissue provides the framework for the physical body, just as identity forms the basis for immaterial existence. For Antalka, these parallel processes are currently the most important points of reference in her life and artistic practice.
Ukrainian-born artist Maria Kulikovska (b. 1988) uses her own body as the central element in her work, repeatedly reproducing it in the form of sculptural replicas made from a variety of natural and artificial materials. Her preferred materials are natural and artificial substances that radically differ from those typically used in sculpture, including salt, milk, sugar, plaster, epoxy resin, and even ballistic soap, a material used in the testing of weapons. Her compositions draw attention to the biological changes experienced by the female body, the temporality of the flesh and the body, the material principle, as well as the debates surrounding women’s position in society. The bust on display here refers back to the iconographic tradition of the hortus conclusus. In art history, images of this kind depicted the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus in a beautiful, idyllic walled garden. The earliest examples are to be found in medieval miniatures, after which they appear in Renaissance paintings. In each case, the garden is a symbol of absolute purity and innocence. Kulikovska’s self-casted bust with flowers enclosed can be interpreted as a contemporary paraphrase of this iconographic tradition, which is also closely associated with the Old Testament Song of Songs. The other works on display are from the artist’s latest watercolour series, Letter to Eva (2023), which reflect on one of the most fragile of female principles, the inheritance of motherhood, and the reality of the artist’s life as a refugee.
The paintings of Czech-born artist Kateřina Ondrušková (b. 1991) are almost always connected with nature, which emerges as the distinctive theme connecting individual cycles of paintings, either as the principal motif or as a secondary motif. She draws inspiration from cultivated nature and landscaped gardens, while the imagery of her extraordinarily personal works is often combined with melancholic fragments of memory. The essence of her paintings lies in their powerful spontaneity, inspired by the biological processes that take place in nature, such as growth, florescence, and maturation. Her works reflect the explosive vitality of nature. Almost without exception, her series of paintings feature animate and inanimate natural phenomena – flowers and stones – that portray different aspects of human life. She often combines natural motifs and close-ups of flower gardens with depictions of figures, scratched into the layers of paint, that emerge mysteriously from the background or disappear into it. Her work frequently takes direct inspiration from her personal mythology: besides natural motifs, the compositions in her latest series include depictions of her son and time spent with him in nature.
— Mónika Zsikla
