Leering Despondency

¬The exhibition Leering Despondency, composed of paintings created in the past year, represents Paula Gogola’s first artistic solo outing. The title successfully lures us into a vault of low spirits, side eyes, and small sorrows embodied in exaggerated postures and profiles of her protagonist(s). They take us through flashbacks, etched or planted in our memory, of stolen moments, microexpressions, and stories that can either result in explosive potential or be passed through as fleeting moments. The sorrow mentioned here is different from the romantic one, it is closer to the familiar kind that one lays in bed with, has homemade matcha within the following morning, and the one we go to best raves with. She's a different one as Paula would say it “A woman of her sort, of her quality, was one of a kind, and wearing that kind of face was yet not strictly tied to any certain behavior model. It was hard to guess her but we could agree she basicallylacked manners.” Some would call her an iron maiden, strong, seductive, stoic, deadly. Like her sister maidens, her origin is murky, speculated upon, and irresistible. Our maiden is updated, and she brought everyone with her. She had quite a bit of work done, but you can still see the past versions of herself underneath if you know where to look, though, at this point, all of her past selves are morphed into a new entity. “At times, it didn't feel like a kiki, but rather a biweekly meeting of sexual dissidents. It wasn't always the best of fun, but you know, the right time to spill the tea is when it's boiling. And one could be always certain that lid on the pot would not be sitting calmly when these were around.” The class politics of her enhanced features were not easily intellectualized, different rules applied, though often, the same rules applied as to non-iron maidens. Something from within is launching a silent smear campaign, the spikes of the iron corpus are teasing and wounding, dysphoric. “was something off about her face, and in that offness one could see the multitude of possible frightening worlds that the face might've been experiencing at that moment. Although the smirk she had didn't feel inviting, it was difficult not to enter you, I mean her, I don't know how to explain it, not to appear and be involved in this strange map of her interiority... Inseparable from that experience of the exterior event which was her face. Captivating to observe truly, as she probably spent a buck on it. The trace stayed where the stitches were placed, somehow it complimented her eyeliner.” In this text, some blanks are left unfilled, as one prepares to go stealth and carefully curate words in the moment of current geography, these spaces are left assumed, filled within the trusted community, or with the help of an insider. Can we find a way to talk about it without saying it, for the sake of safety? With this textual addition to the works, the gaps and alludes might become louder than the words on the paper, like acrylics on a chalkboard. Zirconium gem fell off. Unlike the text, the paintings have a different tactic for painting the invisible, a small firework is ignited between the eye and the brain, and the brain sees it. All the blanks are filled and the words are read clearly, something clicked, “Thread that kept her eyebrow in its place snapped in a way that you could almost hear it if she hadn't been awkwardly tweaking while attempting to deliver that weak one-liner.” That's what Paula thinks, I'd say she was maybe even trying to give a wink of approval. “Her expression was tight, lips pressed into a thin line as if she were trying to suppress a yawn or a scream. Well not that thin, as she had 2ml both up and down. But it was still somehow possible to guess how she felt about a subject matter.” I think I can imagine how she felt, but I haven't truly felt it.