Café Romeo

UNA is happy to announce Café Romeo, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Sofie Tobiášová (*1996, Prague), opening Saturday, January 28. Subjects of Sofie Tobiášová's work include an expanding collection of everyday objects and situations, usually drawn on her quotidian life, viewed through the lens of dream and imagination. Her characters, flat and distorted, stand out against surreal and night atmospheres, serving as entry points for parallel stories and narrations. The title of the exhibition - Café Romeo - evokes a world that has long disappeared: the old “Mitteleuropa”, with its cafés, drinking culture, style, and decoration. In her unique style, Tobiášová depicts scenes from nightlife, when strengthened by alcohol or late hours, the world we see with our eyes appears sometimes deceptive, as Sofie’s paintings are. The use of trompe l’oeil and optical illusion permeates this last series of works: wood, tile floors, and marble are some of the materials that Sofie recreates through painting, fusing the decorative, the real, the documentary, the fantastic, and raising the question of whether it is true or false: is it a true story what she is trying to tell us? Or is she just faking it? The questions are open to the imagination of the viewer. As always in her practice, the artist focuses on self-representation (many of the characters in the paintings on show are self-portraits), addressing a reflection on her own identity as a woman and an artist, in an attempt to redefine herself, as well as womanhood and its representation in the history of art. Sofie Tobiasova looks at a long tradition of women artists, from the expressionist Marianne von Werefkin to surrealist Toyen (in real name Marie Čermínova), to contemporary painters like Lee Lozano for the radical critique of male hegemony; Lucy McKenzie for the use of trompe l’oeil, Christina Ramberg and Fernanda Laguna for the representation of woman’s body. Hercule Poirot’s investigations, and Simone de Beauvoir’s writings, in particular, her autobiography Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958), serve as a reference too, for atmosphere and sensitivity. Sofie Tobiášová studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in the studio of painting led by Jiri Cernicky and Michal Novotny, where she obtained the degree of BcA (2020). She perfected her studies at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and design in Jerusalem (2018) at the studio of Justin Fitzpatrick and Slava Sobotovicova at AAAD in Prague (2020) and in Italy (2021). Her work was presented at Garage gallery (2023): 35m2 Gallery, Prague  (2023); Prague National Gallery (2022); Gavu (2022); Springs (2020): City Surfer Office, JEDNA DVA TRI gallery, (2019); Karlin Studios Prague; Gallery 207; Holesovicka sachta (2017, 2019, 2020) and Berlinskej Model (2017, 2020), and lot od offsite projects . In 2021, she published the book Everyone is calling me Selfe with PageFive. She is currently enrolled in die Angewandte, University of Applied Arts Vienna, in the painting studio led by Henning Bohl.