DOROTA SADOVSKÁ

07 03 - 26 05 2024
Archdiocesan Museum Olomouc: Gallery

Dorota Sadovská is one of the main representatives of contemporary Slovak figurative painting, but she also works in the field of photography, video art, spatial installations and performance. Her entire intermedia work is united by an intrinsic interest in the human body, which she touches in each of her segments in a specific way. However, it is always a true, deep and intimate artistic statement. She has taken a reverent and innovative approach to depicting traditional Christian figures – Christ, the Virgin Mary, saints and angels – who have been present in her work since the mid-1990s and are still alive today. Usually monochromatic figures whose models are specific people, Dorota conceives of them in a minimalist way, without attributes, clothes and hair -just the body, an eloquent, sometimes expressive language of gestures and gaze, and an unusual way of capturing the figures from a perspective as if from God.

In her exhibition projects, Dorota Sadovská likes to work individually and unconventionally with a given space. Also in the case of our exhibition, we would like to apply an original site-specific installation in the Archdiocesan Museum Gallery, which will interestingly shift and change the traditional perception of these chamber halls. As for the works themselves, a selection of the artist’s work will be presented: several large-format canvases from the Saints series, a large-scale probe with the theme of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and intimately tuned paintings of a nursing Madonna, which will be presented in a quiet yet eloquent dialogue with the Baroque Neapolitan canvas The Nursing Madonna by Bernardo Cavallino (1616-1656) from the collection of the Olomouc Museum of Art. The open space will also feature several large-format canvases from the Hunger series, using the technique of cutting drawing lines into the canvas, which oscillate on the border of painting and object and are visible from both sides.

Dorota Sadovská, Madonna, acrylic on canvas, 2023