ARTIST PROFILE

Lucia Scerankova

  • Slovakia (b. 1985 in Košice)
  • Currently in Prague and London, United Kingdom.

REPRESENTATION

David

David

  • 2018

  • David 16 7 3
  • Lucia 20scerankov c3 a1 2320 12
  • Img 8566
  • David - thumbnail Thinker - thumbnail Vitruvian Man I - thumbnail Vitruvian Man II - thumbnail Table Museum - installation - thinking process - Open Studio at INI PROJECT - thumbnail

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    Table Museum | 2018

Table Museum is the project, originally created for the show with the same title at Zahorian & Van Espen gallery in Prague. I created the series of photographs working with iconic heroic male figures as depicted and known from history of art. I was interested to put them in slightly shifted situations, to create contrastive intimate space for them, not avoiding irony. From the curatorial text by Tereza Jindrová: ...Lucia uses toys (serially produced figures from Japanese company Max Factory) in a new series of photographs called Table Museum. From an edition of the same name the artist selected three iconic figures: Michelangelo’s David, The Thinker by Auguste Rodin and the Vitruvian Man from Leonardo’s drawing. We can interpret this selection as a typology of (male) heroes: David as the ideal of strength and beauty, the Thinker as an allegory of philosophy and soulfulness and the Vitruvian Man as a symbol of rationality and humanism. Flexibility of these toy-figures (delivered with extra hands or heads in the package) enables the artist to play with them and show them from new, unexpected angles. In this way, using subtle shifts, Lucia subverts the respectability of these characters. Lucia’s approach doesn’t lack humour and irony, nor a specific charm. Tenderness and intimacy of the presented works function as a subversive strategy, consciously open to interpretation as a form of parody or caricature. Heroes and triumphs are being challenged, discredited, even mocked...Finally, the fact that Sceranková chose only men as examples of heroic figures is significant. The absence of female heroes is consistent with the exhibition’s overall critique of the concept of heroism. Exclusivity connected with and generated by the idea of the hero (similarly to the genius in Art) cannot be separated from dominance and superiority. For this reason feminist and non-anthropocentric thinkers suggest re-evaluation of the meaning of heroism, emphasising values of “everyday heroism” (to borrow from Philip Zimbardo), based on solidarity, cooperation, care or sustainable and ecological way of life.