About

 

Eva Fajcikova is a Prague-based traditional painter whose practice focuses on the female figure and the floral-fungal combination tinged by perfume.

The figurative work combines elements of preexisting mythologies, folklore, and spiritualities to create a hybrid vocabulary that explores the complexity of female figures. These figures are often inspired by fashion magazines, in particular Italian Vogue of which she is an avid collector.

In the last year and project, she extended this theme to the area of ​​flora and fungi, when she made an expressive paintings of plants, often poisonous or used in perfumery, creating a new form of herbarium. In doing so, Eva strengthened the theme and the relationship of a woman-witch, gatherer, salve maker with nature. This ironically alludes to the composition of figures taken from fashion magazines, which want to sell us the illusion of eternal youth in the form of miraculous salves and concoctions. Long before the monetization of the wellness industry, ointments were a subversive tool for rites of passage, their hallucinogenic effects as a symbolic gates for a psychedelic flight outside one's body. What are the rituals and effects that we want to achieve today when applying retinol at night and vitamin C in the morning together with SPF50 sunscreen?

All that was missing from this imaginary cauldron of artistic elixir were vapors and author's desire to step out of the 2D surface of the painting into the exhibition space. Since perfumes are another passion of hers, and scents or stenchs, unlike images, know no boundaries, she decided to combine an object with smells. For a while, the painters friends and her became the archetypes of the women from the pictures she paints, since pouring wax on the plinth, collecting plants, etc. cannot be done alone. A perfume object was created by mixing a hand-made perfume inspired by a painting, a combination of beeswax and flower wax (a secondary product in the production of flower essence), pouring it on a plinth, collecting plants, drying them, gluing them, and the subsequent harvesting ritual with candles.