SODA gallery

LUCIA TALLOVA in her project works with the large-format assembly, architecturally framed scene with components of painting, object and sculpure. The boundaries between the artefacts do not matter, because one artwork finishes the other and together, they create a poetically congenial statement. In her installations and three- dimensional collages, artist works with old photographs and second-hand furniture. The photography is complemented by sensitive interventions, such as adding a paint spot, another image or object, in various manipulated forms. At other times, she proceeds in the opposite direction and selects a detail from the image that she isolates. With these authorial gestures, Tallova violates and overwrites the subject of the photographic record, which results in an awakening of the photographic medium and a revival of the image (of the time past) in the present space. Tallova’s work is characterized by two pictorial motifs: sea landscape and airy atmosphere. The author keeps returning to sea levels and water shores, or steam, air, and clouds. She returns to them not only on the subject level of photographic records but also in her paintings. Paintings, large-sized canvases, seem to capture movement as a form of a cycle of constancy – water that changes into water vapour; crystallizes and then returns to its original state. This transformation, which is the cypher of motion, happens also when the images of water vapour vanish before our eyes and disappear into an abstract painting, which is perhaps an even truer portrait of its subject.

Lucia Tallová is an established figure of the Slovak contemporary art. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. Her works have been presented at many exhibitions to Central European (solo Frieze New York, Artissima 2019, FIAC, Art Paris, Milan- Miart) audiences but also in New York(Volta 2018), in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka) and Brasília 2019. She took part in a residency at the Headlands San Francisco, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and Brasília. She won several awards in Slovakia(TatraBank award, VUB Painting of the year, NOVUM fondation..) and Austria(Strabag), and her works are in collections Slovak National gallery, MAM in Rio de Janeiro, MUSEU Nacional da República Brasília, and many important private collections around the world.

SODA gallery is a Bratislava – based gallery dealing exclusively in critically acclaimed, important works of contemporary art produced by very young, emerging and high-caliber central and Eastern European artists. Since opening its doors in 2010, it has been home to innovative, singular and pioneering exhibitions across a variety of media and genres, tracing the latest trends in contemporary curating. Currently, SODA gallery represents 16 multi generation artists, and hosting 4-5 gallery based exhibitions a year. From 2014 has been successfully engaging in the art fairs world (Frieze Masters, Frieze London, Frieze New York, Artissima, Miart Milano, Art Paris…etc.) systematically presenting solo and group shows of EEU artists.