Stanislava Kovalcikova: Cautionary Tales at MAMOTH

MAMOTH is pleased to present a solo exhibition, Cautionary Tales by Stanislava Kovalcikova, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.   

Kovalcikova grew up in Slovakia. In the early nineties, her surroundings were rapidly transformed from long decades of Communist rule to a young capitalist system. Economic efficiency, consumption and marketability became the driving forces of society. Kovalcikova believes art is different, and that it is therefore immoral to propose a ready-made solution at the end of the process. 

 

 

 

 

Using a palette of umber, crimson and jade, Kovalcikova’s canvasses reference the canonical paintings of Giorgione, Titian and Velasquez. Her subjects’ longing gazes offer a similar mystique to those of the Renaissance muses. Quite often her protagonists are looking away – never at the observer, and each at something different – their haunting expressions suggestive of our dual personalities and inner demons. Applied to look like collage, Kovalcikova's minglings of people are left to moulder on the surface, their facial characteristics melting away. 

 

 

 

 

The way Kovalcikova works with paint is textural, laden with layers and different processes. She enjoys researching and experimenting with materials and unconventional painting media. She is especially interested in old techniques from masters. Through her job as assistant to the painting material department, she had access to old pigments, mediums, recipes and texts. She often sands her paintings up to ten times and starts painting again on the residue of the underneath image. 

 

 

 

 

“I collected old pigments mainly, and I use a lots of different recipes to create the background. Most of my paintings won’t leave my studio earlier than three years. But often, the main question will always be - who are these people?" 

 

 

 

 

The characters in Kovalcikova's painting are often a depiction of inner states of herself or comes from her dreams. Sometimes characters from her family, her friends and people of public interest also enter her canvasses. 

 

 

 

 

“Usually my topic is pure imagination but at the same time I cannot paint unless I feel I know something up to the detail. Another very important source of my creation is my remembrance of my childhood. I recollect how, as a little girl, I looked at things around me and could not stop watching with emotions like astonishment and surprise.” 

 

 

 

 

“ Many viewers wonder why I often depict people of colour. I sense the same familiarity with these characters, and have integrated this from a very early stage in my practice. I thought a lot about outsiders and invisible structures of power before cultural diversity and rehabilitation of the Black body became fashionable. ” 

 

 

The female body is, on the one the hand, a symbol for appeal, attraction and beauty, and, on the other hand, a symbol of the origin of all life. Becoming a mother herself at a young age has profoundly shaped Kovalcikova's vision as an artist. Her identity as a mother also has raised her curiosity about how to represent women and beauty. "My own body and sexuality offer me a new way to look at things, not with the narcissist glasses of the author, but the equilibrium between reality and subjectivism. Besides my own identity, I also draw inspiration from classical master paintings such as Cranach’s women, Velazquez’s Venus del Espejo or Goya's Mayas, Ingres’s Odalisque, Manet’s Olympia, Renoir’s women, Bonnard’s bathers or Matisse’s models, as well as Picasso’s Marie Therese. Kahlo’s and Modersohn-Becker’s self-portraits, Carrington’s girls, Dumas’s and Neel’s female nudes. I think of these paintings as powerful symbols of situations in which the figure of a woman can appear." 

 

 

 

 

” I am fascinated by faces and expressions and have a massive collection of portraits for my research. My practice is also mainly develops around the characters in my paintings. There are a lot of portraits I painted, which come quite fast and naturally. In my more significant works, I use these as some kind of studies for the characters I developed. There is always some kind of interaction and often social tension, even if it just a single woman laying on the floor. So there is always some kind of invisible third person. “ 

 

 

 

"I feel that I can leave in the viewer a torment that can engender meditation, instead of offering a euphoric solution at any price. It's the feel where I built up detention in my paintings. I believe people have a light and dark side, everyone has one, and I tried to put that into my paintings. I evolve my praxis as a Platonian 'skepsi' - a continual search." 

 

 

Stanislava Kovalcikova (b. 1988, Slovakia) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Drawing on the contemporary and historical perspective of the female nude, Kovalcikova uses paint as a tool for introspective examining of the body, where her works directly reference 16th-19th century paintings. Her works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Mendes Wood DM in Brussels and Tramps in London.