Agata Slovak's art balances between what is individual and autobiographical and what moves her politically. Her painting method may seem deceptively traditional: Slovak plays with conventions
painting of various epochs, referring to the classical works of Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism, to feministly “rewrite” by tradition dictated by large men's painters. Her favorite.
The colours are "dirty" and dark, the artist besides uses realistic painting formulas to emphasize strong expression. Her motives: rituals, love, suffering, scenes referring to content and form to
mythological, they seem profoundly rooted in something primal and magical. The artist uses large themes of European art: madness, death and archetypes: motherhood, sisterhood, relation between women and men, sex conflict for dominance, and especially relationships, often
homoerotic, between women, extracting the originality of emotion in modern relationships. Archetype emphasizes the presence of animals and animal and non-human motives in her works,
which makes them seem to mention to the full biological life, besides beyond purely human. It helps her to relate to rituals, magic, as well as the agrarian world, natural landscape.
It's dark. Her portraits are a deep intellectual penetration of her models. Relations stay the most crucial topic, in their frequently most predatory, unadulterated culture dimension, with
which the artist focuses especially on the experiences of women and their situation in the social world, telling about universal misogyny. Her diploma “I am beautiful. I am a large artist” included a sculptural installation, an exploration of the ban on legal abortion in Poland and its brutal effects on women's lives. A separate part of her interests are autobiographical themes, where the artist digs into her own childhood, memory and household life in a tension to adult and erotic life, exploring her identity.
‘Seper and blood cross-section: Self-portrait with sperm and blood crossing’,
2023, oil on canvas, 90 x 70 cm.
Photo courtesy of the Artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation
