Lavinia Lanner and Andrea Kopecká – Berührungspunkte // Points of contact

Exhibition: 8/5/2022 – 12/6/2022
Curator: Miroslava Urbanová
Open: wed- sun: 12.00-17.00
Saturday: 12.00-18.00

Whenever a single exhibition presents two authors, it always invites the audience to compare their respective works, to search for overlaps and points of contact. Remarkably, what enables the dialogue between the distinctive works of Lavinia Lanner and Andrea Kopecká is not their similarity, but their tangible visual contrast. They work almost exclusively in the sister media of painting (Kopecká) and drawing (Lanner), two methods of expression that historically stood against each other in an imaginary form of competition. Maybe that’s why both artists really enjoy exploring to the depths of their boundaries, always looking for possible ways expand the horizons of their art through specific technological approaches in larger cycles and series. At this moment, Banská Štiavnica is becoming an idyllic meeting place for the artists, who are fascinated by the materiality and fluidity of living and non-living things.

Lavinia’s approach to drawing is perfectionist down to the last detail (she even uses exclusively only one type of pencil), but at the same time she is great at conveying strong emotions. This is reflected not only in the resulting precise drawing, which, although it tends to a certain kind of realism in its objectivity, also excels in its abstract imagery. She works with precise strokes on a plain sheet of paper, which form shapes only after hundreds of them are layered on top, and next to each other. She shades them into sets that imitate various organic and inorganic surfaces, materials and structures within the two-dimensional area of the drawing. She depicts the impression of sculptural objects in mostly self-contained forms and hypnotic scenes. She is no stranger to irony and exaggeration, which is what allows her to create place-specific installations, which serve to create an extremely impressive setting in which to present her drawings.

Andrea, on the other hand, is currently creating introspective images that focus on conveying both the atmospheric fluidity of landscapes, and their vulnerability, at the same time. Her painting gesture is reductive, applying individual layers of paint just to wash them right away and leave only the traces of a wet, destructive process. This time-consuming way of painting is similar to the way of nature which, empowered by the ever present water element, creates an end result that clearly resembles the ephemeral qualities of our own emotions. Her latest works are covered by a veil of her own dream of escapism into the nature, an imaginary embrace of the structure of her immediate and distant surroundings. The outlines of horizons intersect with closeups of surfaces, as if she wanted to encompass the remoteness of distant lands and the details of immediate vicinity all at the same time, and then transfer them into the gallery. The depth of Andrea’s technique is rooted in her older figural work, where she symbolically repeatedly “wounded” and “healed” the painting surface, the canvas, the skin of the painting in a series of portraits. At the same time, it also reflects her current experience of a life influenced by the location in her new studio, which is near Banská Štiavnica. For her, its distance from the rush of city life creates the ideal conditions for development of this type of sensitivity.

Text: Miroslava Urbanová, curator

Lavinia Lanner /*1985/ an alumni of Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and also studied at the Slade School of Fine Art London. Her works are represented in the public collections of the Artothek des Bundes, the Land of Salzburg, the city of Vienna, the graphic collection of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the city of Montrouge and the Walter Koschatzky Kunstpreis collection. Selection of exhibitions: 2021 Not Long Now, Galerie blaugelbe, Zwettl, 2021 Zeichnung oder Objekt, dok.noe, St. St. Pölten, 2020 Open Studio, Galerie Schloss Wiespach, Salzburg, 2020 Fortress of salt, recommended by Séamus Kealy, Elektrohalle Rhomberg, Salzburg, 2020 Stand by, Galerie Rudolf Leeb, Vienna, 2019 Hairbarium, Galerie Rudolf Leeb, Vienna, 2019 When I close my eyes in the dark, Sophia Vonier Gallery, Salzburg, 2018 Red Carpet Showroom Volkstheater, Vienna 2018 Zeichnung, ICON Galerie, Linz, Vienna, 2017 fighter eraser, Galerie Loft8, Vienna 2017 essentialities, Sewon Art Space Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2016 trophy, Atelier Haaskeusche Glanegg, Carinthia, 2015 Geister, Stadtgalerie im Amthof Feldkirchen, Carinthia, 2014 Grauzone 2, Galerie Loft8, Vienna, 2013 Grauzone 1, Das graue b, moe, Vienna. She lives and works in Vienna and Salzburg.

Andrea Kopecká /*1988 / an alumni of Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. In 2019 she was awarded the Martin Benka Prize. In 2019 and 2016, she attended an art residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Selection of exhibitions: 2021 Paris Reflections, French Institute, Bratislava, 2020 Trio, Gallery 19, Bratislava, 2018 Metamorphoses of Painting II., Bratislava Castle, Kulturfabrik Košice, 2018 Young Slovak Contemporary Art, Ausstellungsbrucke, St. Polten, 2017 The Search for an Identity – Slovak Art, the International Citizens of Arts, Paris, 2016 Toucher La Ville, Čin Čin Gallery, Bratislava, 2016 Biennale of Fine Art, Turčianska Gallery, 2016 Modern Art Slovakia, Landesgalerie Burgenland , 2016 Black and White or DIE !, Gallery M.A. Bazovského, 2015 BAnda – Naporcovani, Galerie Ján Koniark, 2015 BAnda – Old media present, Magna gallery, 2015 New Now, WesterGasFabriek, Amsterdam, 2014 Prasačinky, Žumpa, Bratislava, 2014 Personal folklore, Freshmen’s gallery, Bratislava, 2014 Solitude, River Gallery , Bratislava, 2013 Sppirit, SPP Gallery, Bratislava. She lives and works in Bratislava and Beluja.