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Animals
Petra Kanócz
11. 5. − 1. 7. 2024
Kurátor: Andrej Jaroš
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The third exhibition in a row in 2024 at Flatgallery is dedicated to Petra Kanócz, a talented author from Košice, which is an already established generation, a graduate of the painting department of the painting department in the studios of pedagogues Žigmond Károlyi and Eszter Radák at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest (2005).
The " ANIMALS " exhibition project presents a curated selection of works from the author's current visual work, seamlessly following previous works with animal themes in her typical surreal form, but based on the real world.
The curatorial selection of works by Andrej Jaroš conveys to the visitors the author's expressive and thematically significant thought processes in a significant colour explosion.
AUTHORS WORD
I have dealt with the topic of animal portraits in different periods of my work. These portraits are a kind of mirror into the soul/head of the given creature.
It is also said that animals are "dumb souls", they cannot communicate their needs and thoughts with words, and they caress hoping that someone will understand them.
In older depictions, the "beasts"; have a human body and are dressed in "trendy clothes", some even with a pattern corresponding to the pattern of the animal's fur. In doing so, I tried not only to point out the time of consumerism and blindly following the trend but also to play with irony and cynicism.
I deliberately show the animals dressed and thereby personify them. I also offer them a certain tool for presenting themselves. The background indicates the space in which they are located. There is a story behind them, but they are taken out of their context and brought to the fore as lone, posing models.
In other cases, by indicating the horizon, I try to place the "animal"; in a neutral abstract space.
It adds atmosphere and underlines the mood of the depicted being. I like to play with unusual depictions of everyday objects and phenomena. I'm moving the line between primarily beautiful and not-so-aesthetic. I will enhance it with careless expressiveness and the use of "dirty"; colours. I don't want to be liked but to be impressed.
For some, the leathery, wrinkled face of a cat can seem repulsive, but for me, it offers the possibility of a game of how to depict it to make it beautiful. He draws the viewer into his story of an ugly cat at first glance, who is dressed in a rainbow fur coat resembling cotton candy and has become a victim of the taste of its owner - the LORD.
Just like a black poodle whose lush black fur is seething from a plastic pink jacket that is small and uncomfortable for him, it matches the designer jacket of his MRS. These "animals" are also a subjective mirror which examines my moods, perceptions and ability to be present in the anonymity of their being.
CURATORIAL TEXT
As part of the "ANIMALS" exhibition, Petra Kanócz's latest works from her work over the past 7 years are presented, in which she gradually builds on her previous "animal cycles" with significantly expressive, gestural attitudes and
at the same time in the raw visual representation of flowing acrylic painting.
Through the personification process, the author imprints various human characteristics and a range of emotions on various animal individuals, which she projects into real life, but contemplates in a kind of dreamlike intoxication.
Playful, but currently stigmatized bears, faithful dogs in the image of their masters and mistresses, cuddly but also wild, electrifying Egyptian smooth-haired cats, fish variations, or mythical unicorns appear here.
Petra's sense of witty irony and at the same time a strong observational ability create a powerfully creative combo, of almost endless Esop's fables.
A wide range of colour shades, including flashy neon accents and additional inscriptions points to the current pop-art references of postmodernist painting.
It also also accents to the strong modernist tradition of the Hungarian visual school, somewhat exotic, and somewhat close to our domestic painting, which in its essence it keeps discovering inexhaustible new positions in a new context.
