Stanislava Kovalcikova: Grotto

In her first solo show in Austria, Stanislava Kovalcikova is offering an insight into her enthralling and enigmatic work. Her paintings revolve around questions of personal identity and its construction.

Stanislava Kovalcikova creates dreamlike, bizarre scenarios inhabited by human and animal characters who operate outside of social norms. The alienation of the familiar is a key stylistic device she employs. Her paintings’ protagonists defy categorization, are gender-fluid, fantasy beings with ambiguous social origins, timeless age, and indeterminable skin color, as well as inscrutable intentions. Their relationships cannot be interpreted with any clarity and appear both captivating and disturbing.

Kovalcikova’s figurative painting draws on the canon of art history. She has a profound knowledge of the history of painting, often quoting from great masters, such as Titian, Giorgione, Goya, Gauguin, Van Gogh or Manet, and combines these references with a consistently contemporary perspective on controversial present-day issues. Her paintings link collective scenes to the myth of Dionysus—the god of wine and ecstasy. In her tragicomic depiction of nocturnal excesses, the artist makes references to hedonistic sexuality, which at the present time appears as an imperiled refuge.

The artist’s intentions are revealed to some extent in her choreography of the exhibition at the Belvedere 21. The title Grotto takes its name from the artificial grotto at the Los Angeles mansion of Hugh Hefner, former editor-in-chief of Playboy. After his death, reports emerged about sexual abuse and drug excesses at his parties there. The title alludes to the interplay of toxic masculinity, money, power, and the sexual exploitation of women. A further facet is the term grotesque—derived from the Italian word grotto—which, in the history of art, represents the violation of formal rules and design principles: a leitmotif in Kovalcikova’s work.

The impression of the parallel world conveyed by Kovalcikova’s painting, a world in which longings, desires, threats, and fears are acted out in a surreal manner, is transferred into the exhibition space by introducing an orange film over the windows. The filtered daylight not only changes the space but also time. On entering the exhibition, you step out of the chronological flow of your own perception. Kovalcikova invites visitors to contemplate her compelling and enigmatic work—and in this way to look inside themselves as well.

Curated by Stella Rollig.

Biography
Stanislava Kovalcikova was born in Czechoslovakia in 1988. Her mother is from the Russian island Sakhalin in the Pacific, her father from the small town Komárno in modern-day Slovakia. Kovalcikova’s childhood and teenage years were spent in various places in Europe. She studied painting at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art with Tomma Abts and Peter Doig. Experiences of crossing boundaries in life, of not belonging in a community, and her role as a mother are all addressed in her work. Her art revolves around questions of familiarity, alienation, personal identity and its construction. The artist lives and works in Düsseldorf.

Catalogue
Stanislava Kovalcikova
Editor: Stella Rollig
Authors: Anke Kempkes, Nick Koenigsknecht, Stanislava Kovalcikova, Stella Rollig
Graphic design: Astrid Seme
Published by Buchhandlung Walther & Franz König
Number of pages: approx. 144 pages, approx. 60 illustrations
German & English in one volume
Retail price: 29,80 Euro
ISBN 978-3-903327-38-2
Subject to alterations

Press contact: Irene Jäger / presse@belvedere.at / T +43 1 79 557-185

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