Katarina Kudelova

Katarina Kudelova is a Slovakian artist based in France. Her childhood spent amongst nature in a family of forest engineers - a widespread profession in a country marked by mountains and forests - has had a considerable impact on her artistic practice. Her works often represent woodland animals from deers to rabbits and tree-adorned landscaped teeming with silent life.

“Violence with gentleness, fragility with permanence, danger with the appearance of security, fear with confidence, anger with serenity, humor with gravity” - Etienne Cornevin. A harmless ceramic pig strapped with firecrackers; tranquil deers made of firecrackers, connected to a hunter and his gun by a blazing trail of flaming wick. Through representations of both humans and animals, Kudelova explores questions relating to life and death, random destinies, the improbable conditions of existence, and fragility. There is a constant tension between tender stillness and an impending sense of catastrophe and brutality of the natural order that has the viewer on the edge of their seat with a wary anticipation.

In her artistic process, Kudelova creates with mixed techniques, employing various mediums from barbed wire to firecrackers from which no human or animal incarnation is safe. The unstable and explosive undercurrent of her artworks screams danger and acts out the immutable cycle of change and decay.