Paulina Škávová

(b. 1976) has studied since 1997 in Karel Nepraš’s studio of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 1999 she passed a study program at Kuvataide-akatemia in Helsinki.

Paulina Škávová’s newest work walks the line between sculpture and concept, which the artist attributes to the free atmosphere in Nepraš’s studio. She rejects any narrow definitions of sculpture, object or installation.
Her work is typical for its consistency and playfulness. For the project Trenažér pro bankovní lupiče (Trainer for Bank Robbers, 2001) she went and got a gun license. While working on the design for a memorial to the Knights of Blaník (2002) she walked the entire countryside around the mountain of Blaník and created a three-dimensional object/map in the shape of a double-winged table. After flapping open the wings the viewer can take a look inside the guts of the legendary hill with a system of passages fashioned after the famous complex of caves in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region.
Her method of presentation corresponds to her projects’ humorous energy. Škávová installed the Trainer in an municipal office in Trutnov, while the Knights of Blaník model she wants to place in the train station at the foot of the hill.
Besides ingenious conceptual projects, Škávová has been long interested in the darker theme of the human body and its physical limitations, the feeling of claustrophobia and attempts at emancipation from the grip of the physical world. She chooses a more classic presentation to work out these themes: a human body stuffed into a sink, an obese figure squashed between two sheets of glass, a fat foot nearly bursting the straps of its shoe.

01.02.2002