Pomalu ale rychle8. 10. 2026 – 25. 1. 2027
Korunní 95, Praha – Vinohrady

Curatorial Text

What happens when you place the works of two artists whose real-life paths do not cross in everyday life next to each other? In a shared space, their canvases suddenly begin to converse in an authentic dialogue, but also in shouts, laughter, and tears. The joint exhibition of Silvia Krivošíková and Václav Stratil at Prague’s Kabzan Gallery in Vinohrady creates an illusion that is stronger than reality. The exhibition space transforms their work into one large, fictional family portrait. It is a family related not by blood, but by a shared theme: an obsession with the medium of easel painting, as well as the human face, portraiture, self-portraiture, and their own existence.

Krivošíková and Stratil do not meet on the level of formal style within this deeply personal theme. Each speaks a different visual dialect. However, they are connected by something far more essential the plane of pure emotion and an inherent awareness that descriptive academic realism cannot capture inner truth. Both artists consciously turn towards distinct stylization and a certain post-Cubist, raw form of artistic expression. It is as if they are telling us that to truly see and understand the artwork itself, we must first cast aside learned academic rules.

This exhibition turns the traditional, passive role of the viewer upside down. The portrait here is not an object to be safely observed. It is not only a mirror, but also a window from which the paintings actively look back at us. To enter the exhibition means to be seen. The faces on the walls will not let you just pass by. They observe you, lock their eyes onto yours, and fight for your attention. Yet, each artist draws entirely different weapons for this battle over the human gaze.

Václav Stratil attacks with an immediate, pure joy of creation, humor, a punk aesthetic, and a programmatic lack of style. His self-portraits are a liberating, provocative play on identity that both amuses and disquiets. Silvia Krivošíková, on the other hand, draws the viewer in with a quiet, deep sadness. It is a melancholy at the end of history, which does not care about the ordinary person. Her figures carry the weight of everyday life, as well as things that were never supposed to happen to you in life, yet they did.

While the interwar duo of Toyen and Jindřich Štyrský defined Czech Surrealism through dreamlike fantasy, inner worlds, and the dismantling of traditional gender roles, the contemporary creative alliance of Silvia Krivošíková and Václav Stratil transfers this artistic oxymoron directly into the title of their new joint exhibition, “Slowly but Quickly.” Both of these duos, though separated by an entire century, build upon the spark between two powerful individualities who, at first glance, do not seem to belong together at all. Yet, it is precisely from this absolute disparity and the tension between the artists that a truly unique connection emerges, one where differing worlds do not clash but rather provoke and complement each other. The only difference is that while the first historic couple sought hidden truths in the depths of the human subconscious, Krivošíková and Stratil deconstruct the very identity of the artist, proving that even within total contradiction, perfect creative harmony can be found.

The portraits and self-portraits of S.K. and V.S. could be described as a kind of Artificialist portrait, understood as a term directly referencing the Czech avant-garde (Štyrský and Toyen). This means that the painter does not depict reality, but rather “poetic” inner visions and dreams yet with the awareness that our dreams today are already infected by the digital world. I am fond of this Czechoslovak legacy from art history, exactly one hundred years old, not only because our current pair is Czechoslovak, but also due to the contemporary relevance of the word Artificialist / AI. Toyen and Štyrský were truly visionaries in this regard.

Time begins to behave strangely at Kabzan Gallery. We walk through it slowly but quickly, because the weight and urgency of the gazes from the paintings force us to stop and think. At the same time, we connect with both artists lightning-fast in a single flash of intuition, recognizing a piece of our own self in a strange, deformed, or masked face on the wall.

Artist Biographies

Silvia Krivošíková (b. 1976) is a Slovak painter with a long-standing international presence. Her work is characterized by a distinctive dialogue with the modernist legacy, post-Cubist morphology, and geometric abstraction. She deconstructs the human figure and face into elementary forms and planes. Her pieces blend rational composition with a deep, often melancholic emotional testimony about human existence and loneliness.

Václav Stratil (b. 1950) is one of the most prominent, influential, and uncompromising figures on the Czech conceptual and intermediate art scene. For many years, he headed the Intermedia Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology (FaVU VUT). Stratil is a legendary researcher in the field of portraiture, self-portraiture, and identity. He utilizes drawing, painting, photography, and radical performance. He stylizes himself into hundreds of different roles, constantly challenging the boundaries of authorship, taste, and artistic style.