Parellel Worlds

The painter Oľga Paštéková presents her solo exhibition Parallel Worlds which focuses on the relationship of people and animals, but also the urban and natural environments. The artist researches how our developed civilisation and culture affect the indigenous and wild nature. How they influence and change it. How these two worlds coexist and where their borders lie. Do they overlap, do they exist in harmony, do they lead their parallel lives or do they push each other out?

The exhibition will present four series of works which incorporate animals in various kinds of relationships with different urban environments. Some of the oldest pieces include drawings Night Walker – baliačáky which capture quiet night life in the otherwise hectic and also largest subdivision of Petržalka, Bratislava. Its concrete and impersonal architecture seems gentler and more hospitable, more humane. A single territory is shared by people walking their pet dogs, which at certain point turn into “wild wolves” as they find themselves under “attack” by streetlight pollution. The artist’s series of paintings titled In Wonderland reflects upon former, currently closed-down amusement parks and presents them as a relic of artificial, human interference into the natural environment.

These originally crowded and noisy places have turned into abandoned attractions. They have been given another chance by the invincible nature and wildlife which have “recycled” them into their homes and living spaces. A similar approach has been also used in the painter’s large-format installation titled Fragile Balance, which shows abandoned, decaying industrial premises, as products of human activity and symbols of our expanding civilisation, under the rule of the animal kingdom. The exhibition concludes with a series of large-format pieces titled If You Became Naked, which merges the world of man and the world of animals by turning man into an animal. Or is it the other way around?