Svit, Prague & Photoport, Bratislava - Dialogue
Alexandra Barth and Habima Fuchs
SVIT Gallery (CZ) is pleased to present Habima Fuchs in dialogue with the recent works of Alexandra Barth as a joint collaboration with PHOTOPORT Gallery from Bratislava (SK).
Habima Fuchs was born in Ostrov, Czechoslovakia in 1977. She lives and works in Prague and Caslav (CZ). She produces ceramic sculptures and installations, she draws, paints and tailors. The language of forms and visual vocabulary of Habima Fuchs are defined by the intensive analysis of various cultures and religions. Their interrelations become clear in the work of Habima Fuchs, through her engagement with archetypes and universal principles. Spiritual worlds of imagination are united through her work to create a cosmos, which is pervaded by her own experience, awareness and lifestyle.
Alexandra Barth was born in Malacky, Czechoslovakia in 1989. She lives and works in Zohor (SK) and Sanguinetto (IT).
She is essentially a still life painter. Working in air brush, Barth portrays stark and moody interiors of a relatively nondescript, middle European character. Her cold, quasi-photographic imagery is freighted with a nebulous, if noirish narrative charge; far from cozy and welcoming, it contains a certain menace, as if these were forensic details of a crime scene. The uniform Ikea-style furniture found in her interiors, which recalls the utopian production ideals of Bauhaus, Russian constructivism, and even post-war American design, assumes a somewhat dystoptian character here, by virtue of having all but fully realized the homogenizing tendancy of these movements. The unexpected angles of Barth’s compositions wield a rushed, snapshot quality while recalling the dramatic angularity of constructivism– a drama that is heightened by the work’s penchant for chiaroscuro lighting. As such, these ostensibly simple still lives are full of a rich and dynamic strangeness which subtly upends their apparent banality while depicting certain legacies of modernism within every day life.
Chris Sharp
