Dorota Sadovská (* 1973)
Slough, 2003
video, color, sound, 73´
from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2017
Dorota Sadovská (* 1973) devoted herself to painting in the 1990s, at a time when the face of Slovak fine art was more characterized by a preference for media and intermedia forms of art – even in the young generation to which she, as an exclusive painter at the time, belonged. At that time and in the following decade, she introduced elements into her work, which gradually became her license – a realistically depicted figure, references to the attributes of saints in figural painting, also work with the perspective of the figure, and later dealing with clothing as a processual category. From the point of view of crossing the boundaries of the media, her spatial pictorial installations were specific, in which she adhered to her own painting program, but at the same time they can also be perceived as a reaction to the spatial code of 90.s art.
A special feature in her work is the elaboration of the issue of the body / corporality. In a series of photographs with this name, she deliberately deformed the attributes of femininity – breasts with the pressure of her hand, where the result distorted the idea of the beauty of the female body (as a common myth and also the breast as a symbol of sexuality). The perceived performativeness in the background of the creation of the photographic image referred to the body as a haptic material, not primarily as a category for the painting of a figure.
Despite the general interest in her paintings by collectors and galleries and the dominance in her work, especially in its early stages, Dorota Sadovská is also the author of several videos which, despite a relatively small number, significantly enriched the Slovak video art register after 2000. One of them is Undressing from the Skin, where she works with body mass in a similar manner.
Video is actually a digital image in the form of a large-screen projection, changing over time only gradually and very unnoticed. The minimally noticeable movement of naked intertwined male and female bodies, where at first glance it is not possible to see which is which, is accompanied by an emotionally tuned composition by the musician Martin Burlas. In the context of her work, this is one of the most significant works of the artist depicting sexuality and corporality in such an open way. The artist’s painting trajectory, reaching for photography and finally the above example of the media type of work, says a lot about the author’s understanding of the figural work complex in relation to the medium – art theorist Katarína Rusnáková mentions the image transformation process – from painting to video and digital media. example of the so-called remediation, where new media transform the previous ones (analogue).
Video – we can also talk about video painting- was part of the selection for exhibitions dedicated to the art of the first decade of the new millennium: Zero Years / Zeró Évek / Nuller Jahre (Bratislava House of Art, 2011, MODEM Debrecen, 2012, Fries Museum Berlin, 2013).
The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.
The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.
