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Meetings
Nikola Šušovicová
13. 7. − 15. 9. 2024
Kurátor: Andrej Jaroš
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition STRETNUTIA (MEETINGS) presents a curated selection of works from her current artwork, which she embarked on after returning to her native Banská Štiavnica in the summer of 2023.
Through it, she explores the mutual relationships and interactions of space (painting and real) and the people situated in it. It expresses and searches for the essences of being and their being in ordinary, everyday life. It depicts an emotional memory layered with lived memories and time that hibernates in seemingly frozen scenes.
Some of Nikola Šušovicová's paintings refer to intimate domestic environments and various objects associated with her family and past, while others, on the contrary, depict empty and uniform environments of austere interiors.
AUTHORS WORD
STRETNUTIA (MEETINGS) is a solo exhibition of budding author Nikola Šušovicová (*1994), who graduated with master's studies at the Painting Studio III. under the leadership of Rastislav Podhorský and Martin Špirec at the AFAD in Bratislava.
In her work, she focuses intensively and purposefully on the medium of painting and its overlaps. Thematically, it deals with the possibilities of perceiving reality through "planar spaces" (imaginary areas laid out in space and re-applied to the surface of the painting canvas) on the limited possibilities of our vision and the distortion of perception.
Although she primarily remains on the surface of the painting and the textures of the structures, she is also keenly aware of spatial qualities and emphasizes self-expression through the depicted figures.
As a result, the balance of her work between multiple levels, between surface and space, between something concrete, objective and objective and something subjective, psychological and expressive. It points to the flatness and emotional emptiness of our relationships in real life in the post-pandemic period. ,,Plates and glasses are empty, yet satisfaction does not come from fulfilled needs"
CURATORIAL TEXT
In general, in her paintings, the author significantly abstracts, presents and excludes only certain features of these environments, while thanks to the individual figures shown, she enlivens and presents the abstracted space based on real, experienced events. In her way, she captures the scenes of life, which brings joy and sadness.
She leaves the characters of residents/users anonymous, but here and there she projects herself into one of them. Šušovicová allows the figures to disappear into the surrounding space in a mimicry manner, but on the other hand makes their outline stand out as if in the fluid phosphorescent light of the moon, thus accentuating them and drawing attention to them at the same time.
With such (non)images, she explores the essential relationship between man and the surrounding space, including the depiction of objects (Zlata Zuzana drinking glass set), reevaluates their function/purpose and also space as such, which is the basic condition for the existence of all "being" in the form of any object, body and body.
Šušovicová is interested in objects to which her memories are linked, as forms that are subject to physical wear and tear and eventual dysfunction or even extinction. In her case, however, they receive a symbolic meaning made special by a kind of surreal and poetic charge.
The author further recasts them through perspective and creates a geometric shadow play of (not only) black holes of utopian doctrines, misinformation and disillusionment. She reduces individual objects to such an extent that only a certain attribute remains. Spaces are minimized in this way and objects captured with figures in her paintings take on a kind of transcendental character.
