‘Still Life’ by Kateřina Vincourová at Zahorian & Van Espen Bratislava
The body is a biological system, an organ dependent on external resources from the world, which is extended in the world as a material entity. Besides this positivist conception, here there is also a somewhat different body. The body as image – an expression of our I. What this amounts to is a body fused with other bodies, a body full of communicative potential and opportunity for non-verbal statement, a body that produces a sum of information about the social, age, sexual and hereditary categories of its possessor. Taken in this sense, it cannot be extricated from the collective or deposited in some sort of socially neutralised vacuum. Even solitude thus becomes solitude in the collective. Hence we share this body-image in community, and without having its formation fully under our control. Mass media and advertisers seek to persuade us that we can create this image, measure up to it, and thus gain power over what we want to be (or how we want to be perceived by those around us). The monochrome effigies in display windows are artificial representations of this body. Their meaning and emotional force is neutral only superficially, for example in the eyes of the fashion industry. Kateřina Vincourová definitely does not see them as cold and empty of information. She is conscious that each position of the limbs is laden with significance. It is precisely this second body (the body-image) that her art addresses, and through it she manages with an equally sovereign assurance to make statements about the intimacy and ephemerality of interpersonal relationships as well as raising more general socio-political themes, which are often present beneath the surface of her sculptural and spatial micro-events. This gives the body what is often a purely associative presence; to this end she uses banal everyday objects of consumer culture, working them into new three-dimensional compositions. Her use of “cheap” materials and objects is reminiscent of Arte Povera. However, it is differentiated from the latter by the retention of an individual and relatively stable form. Her installations, spatial drawings and object still lifes are distinguished by a pervasive delicacy, seeming fragility, and undefinable or subtle quality; they contain a certain natural, unstylised essence of femininity.
“Still Life”, a solo exhibition by the internationally established artist Kateřina Vincourová in the Zahorian & Van Espen gallery in Bratislava, presents a selection of her recent and current works. The artist is again exhibiting her sculptural and spatial objects in a Slovak setting after an interval of many years. Ultimately the exhibition serves the long-term aim of the Zahorian & Van Espen Gallery, to interconnect the Slovak and Czech art scenes.
Erik Vilím
Imprint
| Artist | Kateřina Vincourová |
| Exhibition | Still Life |
| Place / venue | Zahorian & Van Espen Bratislava |
| Dates | 10 May – 28 June 2018 |
| Photos | Marko Horban, Iva Durkacova |
| Website | www.zahoriangallery.com |
| Index | Kateřina Vincourová Zahorian & Van Espen Bratislava |