There’s Something in the Air by Ladislava Gažiová 3.9.2025 - 10.10.2025Curator: Alexandra Karpuchina

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Slovak artist Ladislava Gažiová’s exhibition at Karpuchina Gallery follows her notable return to the field of painting. A recipient of prestigious awards such as The Sovereign European Art Prize in London (2007) and the Prize of the Critics for Young Painting (2008), Gažiová devoted much of the last decade primarily to exhibition projects at the intersection of curatorial practice and museological research. She re-entered the spotlight last year, when she won the Meda Mládková Award and revived her painting practice with a successful solo exhibition at Museum Kampa.

Gažiová emerged as a key figure in the painting scene of the 2000s with strikingly dark, often fantastical imagery, frequently referencing painful, anxious, and dramatic emotional experiences. Her distinctive painterly language evolved through the use of a unique spray technique, singular stylisation, and personal symbolism. Over time, however, this deeply introspective approach began to shift. The focus moved from purely personal emotions toward broader reflections, with increasing attention to the political context of both her work’s subject matter and the wider operation of the art world.

A pivotal moment came with her 2013 exhibition at Fotograf Gallery, where she moved away from painting entirely. In a minimalist, almost post-conceptual installation, she explored perceptions of the foreign and the unknown through the lens of postcolonial discourse. In the following years, Gažiová’s interest in postcolonial and decolonial perspectives deepened, as did her engagement with questions of identity formation and the construction of cultural frameworks. She undertook numerous projects dismantling entrenched narratives of cultural history in relation to ethnic minorities, collaborated closely with the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno - working directly with its collections - and founded a library of Romani literature, now part of the Averklub in Chanov, Most.

Her recent return to painting fuses the sensitivity and delicacy of her early works with an engagement in broader societal themes. This is not, however, a simple pivot to overtly political or social issues at the expense of the personal. Gažiová often draws on ordinary things and phenomena from her immediate surroundings. While the motifs are no longer as dreamlike as before, they still carry something of the surreal. Through subtle, often multi-layered references discovered in fragments of reality, Gažiová’s paintings touch on serious and pressing topics. She observes, adjusts, and pushes reality to the edge of what we know to be impossible, while leaving us with the feeling that it might not be entirely so.

In There’s Something in the Air, Gažiová presents an updated version of a previously unexhibited monumental canvas created as part of her diploma project at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, alongside an extensive series of new works. The technique remains the same - spray paint layered through stencils onto raw canvas or glass - yet the paintings now appear more austere, with an almost architectural structure. The palette is earthy and muted, with some works executed entirely in shades of grey. The range of motifs spans both genre scenes (landscapes and vanitas) and constructed situations working with symbols and signs. Gažiová handles weighty themes with great subtlety and poetic sensibility, without diminishing their urgency.

A recurring motif in the series is the shuttlecock. In the company of military submarines and aircraft, the idea of play acquires a different resonance, with the shuttlecock becoming a hypothetical form of ammunition. Through the theme of racket sports, Gažiová engages with the work of the influential Slovak artist Július Koller, further developing his iconic question-mark symbol. She reinterprets his motifs, translating them into her own environment and also touching upon Koller’s emblematic U.F.O. symbol. Her engagement with Koller’s legacy is intuitive and free, yet points to the fact that the question mark was never merely a query, but a demand for reflection on the situation at hand. In today’s context of informational saturation, the symbol urgently reclaims space for questioning what is taken for granted.

Ladislava Gažiová (1981, Spišská Nová Ves, Slovakia) is a mid-career visual artist whose work combines painting, graphic processes, and conceptual approaches, with a strong focus on symbolism and societal themes. She is the recipient of The Sovereign European Art Prize (London, 2007), the Prize of the Critics for Young Painting (2008), and the Meda Mládková Award (2024). Her works are held in the collections of the National Gallery Prague, Prague City Gallery, Museum Kampa, the Richard Adam Collection, the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery, and the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové. Solo exhibitions include Tralala (2005, Entrance Gallery, Prague), Temeraf (2006, Escort Gallery, Brno), Yesterday I Disinfected All of Heaven (2008, Critics’ Gallery, Prague), Tramping to the Orient (2012, NOD Gallery, Prague), Opre Roma (2012, Czech Center Gallery, Munich), Desert (2013, Fotograf Gallery, Prague), The End of the Show (2014, Gallery of the City of Třinec), Dog on the Roof (2015, Vyšehrad Gallery, Prague), A Cloud in Trousers (2016, Jelení Gallery, Prague), and Waiting (2025, Museum Kampa, Prague). In 2021, together with the Averklub Collective, she presented Manuš znamená člověk (Manuš Means Human) at Kunsthalle Wien - a unique exhibition project reflecting Romani identity, culture, and history through artistic practice.

– Alexandra Karpuchina