Artist: Stanislava Kovalcikova Exhibition title: Cautionary Tales Curated by: Jiafeng He Venue: MAMOTH, Date: 28 May – 26 August Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and MAMOTH

Exhibition Press Release :

Slovakian born painter Stanislava Kovalcikova montages figures in boundless scenes suggestive of recurring nightmares, their ghost-like features fixed in pastel and oil bars. Drawn to the techniques of the Old Masters and using a palette of umber, crimson and jade, Kovalcikova’s canvases reference the canonical paintings of Giorgione, Titian, Velasquez – her subjects’ longing gazes offer a similar mystique to the Renaissance muses. Quite often her protagonists are looking away – rarely at the observer, and each at something different – their haunting expressions suggestive of our dual personalities and inner demons, too. A recurring theme of Kovalcikova’s paintings is how perceptions and representations of the female body – and, less particularly, of women – have shifted over time. While echoing Manet’s Olympia and Bonnard’s bather, her eye is drawn to portraying women with a much more complex curiosity which tackles motherhood, pregnancy and beauty.

Kovalcikova’s paintings merge distinctive textures of palette knife smudges, gold leaf dustings and washes of turpentine to build up layers on the surface that dry to look as if they've been eroded by time, like the patina of copper. With the appearance of collage, Kovalcikova's mingling of people moulders on the surface, facial characteristics melting away by her repeated sanding of the canvas while residues of a haunted smirk, or grimace appear underneath. Completed over long periods using found pigments and old mixtures, her paintings often don’t leave the studio until they've had three years of perusing and refinement. Writer Joan Didion sleeps with her books before they are published – for Kovalcikova, painting is as intimate as a night's sleep and she frequently permits the characters that emerge in her subconscious to reappear, their familiarity stiffened in oil.

Artist Bio :

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 in Warsaw, Mendes Wood DM in Brussels and Tramps in London

MAMOTH, 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DS www.mamoth.co.uk Instagram: _mamoth_ [email protected] Artist CV:

Stanislava Kovalcikova (born 1988 in Czechoslovakia) currently based in Dusseldorf,

Vita

2009-2017 Painting class of Peter Doig Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, Germany

2009-2017 Painting class of Tomma Abts, Master Scholar title Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, Germany

2015 Exchange Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK Sculpture class of Enrico David Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, Germany

Selected solo presentations

2020 'Cautionary Tales', Mamoth, London,UK 2019 'I. Turn on inside' Ten Haaf Projects, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2017 'Neosensationalismus' Bruch und Dallas, Cologne, Germany 2016 'Bad Venus' Ten Haaf Projects, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2015 'Sorcerer' Tramps, London, UK 2013 'Lin May, Stanislava Kovalcikova' with Lin May Saeed DOK 25A, Dusseldorf, Germany 2011 'Alphabeta' with Kaoli Mashio Malkasten Kunstverein, Dusseldorf, Germany

MAMOTH, 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DS www.mamoth.co.uk Instagram: _mamoth_ [email protected] Selected group presentations

2020 'If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller', Mamoth, London, UK 2020 'Everything Is Personal', Tramps, New York, USA (group) 2020 'On the Politics of Delicacy', Capitain Petzel, Berlin, Germany 2019 'Gubbinal', Project Native Informant, London, UK 'Painting also known as blood' Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland 2018 'Nightfall', Mendes Wood DM, Brussels, Belgium 'Salon des Amateurs', Tramps, London UK 2017 'Eggy and Seedy', curated by Matt Copson and Alastair Mackinven, Reading, UK 'La Diablesse', Tramps, London, UK 2015 'Imagine', curated by Tomma Abts and Alastair Mackinven, Londonnewcastle Projectspace, London, UK 2014 'Klasse Doig', Display Gallery, London, UK 2013 'Beyond the stage', Canongate, , UK 'Boys on paper, chicks on speed', Parkhaus, Düsseldorf, Germany 2010 'Selfconsciousness', curated by and Peter Doig, Wernerveneklaesen, Berlin, Germany

MAMOTH, 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DS www.mamoth.co.uk Instagram: _mamoth_ [email protected]