SOPHIE TAPPEINER, Vienna x City Galerie Wien, Vienna
Anna Zemánková, Xenia Bond
Two artists, two worlds, two traditions and backgrounds—both women, both introspective.
Anna Zemánková, born in Moravia, present-day Czech Republic in 1908, began creating her intricate paintings and collages in her home at the age of fifty. Xenia Bond, born in London, United Kingdom, in 1992, left home early to study art and become a sculptor.
Both artists have developed extensive systems of forms from which they draw their aesthetic. These systems follow a highly specific logic that lurks under the surface yet asserts an internal coherence that makes sense intuitively from every perspective.
Anna Zemánková’s œuvre is dominated by floral imagery. Although, the only resemblance to familiar flowers is their upward growth. Over the years, she created an invented herbarium of otherworldly organisms, a codex of sorts with recurring patterns, shapes, and structures, with each of the resulting works being unique. This visual language is uniquely her own.
Similarly, Xenia Bond’s work is characterized by systematized forms that evolve into stylized idioms, which she then layers and collages to create new visual narratives. This language is uniquely her own.
Both artists exhibit an extreme sensitivity in their work. While Zemánková’s meticulous attention to detail is evident in each leaf and the deliberate choices behind her compositions, Bond’s intrigue lies in the tactile quality of materials, the sensory impact of colour and the nuanced interplay of meanings. She creates forms rich with double, triple, and quadruple entendres. Her work can be likened to a bouquet of ideas, where each element harmonizes with the next.
Zemánková described her creations as “growing flowers that are not grown anywhere else,” reflecting her interior life and thoughts. The same can be said of Bond, whose work is inimitable and rooted in her unique gestures and sub-cognitive drives, transformed into tangible forms. Both artists claim simplicity in their methods, eschewing mysticism.
Both artists bridge the microcosmic and macroscopic realms. Zemánková with structures of imaginary plants that then appear to look rather like unknown planetary formations. Bond with material and idea and lastly the absurdity of life quickly and elegantly taken down by a little joke, a jab.
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