Still Life

The Still Life exhibition brings together the painterly approaches of Masha Kovtun and Šimon Sýkora, who explore the relationship between personal experience and the shared reality of the contemporary world. Their paintings appear as torn fragments from a larger story – rather than offering clear narratives, they present ambiguous traces and subtle hints. Some scenes may initially seem harmonious, even verging on kitsch, but this aesthetic is used deliberately – as a means of poetic expression and a tool of unsettling contrast. The landscape in their paintings is not merely a backdrop, but an active stage where understated, elusive situations unfold. The figures often look away or beyond the canvas, their gaze is averted, sometimes entirely turned inward. This leaves us in a state of uncertainty, we don’t know what they are looking at, or whether what occupies them is even within the frame. This motif subverts the expectation of linear storytelling and shifts the scene into a peculiar, timeless state. Some works resemble cinematic stills; frozen moments that do not lead to a clear continuation but instead open up a field of possibilities. Time here does not flow continuously, but dissolves into layers in which the present remains fragile and uncertain. This disrupted temporality is a key theme for both artists. While their paintings are still, they evoke a sense of movement; they capture something fleeting that simultaneously feels like a lasting trace. From this ambivalence emerges the paradox of illusory timelessness – sometimes as a nostalgic memory of lost innocence, other times as a haunting sense of looming anxieties that remain outside the visible frame. Rather than constructing a linear narrative, Still Life tends to mirror the state of the contemporary world – its rootlessness, fragmentation, and a certain underlying urgency. The paintings of Masha Kovtun and Šimon Sýkora act as visual records of sensitivity to the present moment – one that is constantly shifting and resists any definitive interpretation.