Emöke Vargová
CV
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Statement
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Curatorial statement
Emöke Vargová (1965, Dunajská Streda) is a true original, a solitaire in the local visual arts scene. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (the class of1991), where she is currently a faculty member of the Drawing Studio. After her beginnings as a painter, she moved on in the 1990s to objects and installations that dealt primarily with the social situation of women. Around 2000 she returned to (among other things) the medium of hanging canvas, this time more in the sense of an object rather than a surface. Her works are created from a combination of unusual materials such as beeswax, plastic bottle caps and toy figurines, but also wood, paper, and plastic foils. A feature typical of Vargová’s works is her unorthodox treatment of even traditional materials. She for instance treats paper not as a blank surface to draw on, but rather as a material for sculpting, folding it into fragile objects, or turning it into a liquid mixture which is in turn molded into various shapes. She is well known for her embroidered pictures with mostly figural motifs which are never the less formally located on the boundary of abstraction. Combinations of shapes, materials, and various types of ornamental stitches form objects with haptic qualities, where the original motifs blend into a fascinating interplay of forms. Another area of her artistic efforts involves sculptures whose size and aesthetic qualities are reminiscent of designer furniture. Vargová’s artworks have a personal, intimate character, they are based on their creator’s private experience, whereby they in a very natural way present the problem of situation and experience of women in general. She won the Oskár Čepan Award in 1999 (back when it was still called the Young Slovak Visual Artist of the Year) and presented her winning artwork at the finalists’ exhibition in the Gallery of the City of Bratislava.