Artist: Anna Solal
Exhibition title: La salle de bain
Curated by: Michal Novotny
Venue: Futura, Prague, The Czech Republic
Date: July 16 – September 15, 2019
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Futura
I’m an attractive and intelligent, and it pleases me that I’m being watched. And if I happen to tell a lie or two from time to time, it’s only so you don’t paint a bad picture of me.
Orhan Pamuk: My name is Red
The bathroom is a first part of a project in the frame of which Anna Solal decided to build a house, or rather its equipment, for someone she doesn’t know. Using junk of the contemporary culture, objects from one euro shops, industrial parts, different pieces of cheap plastic, broken smart phone screens. Those are however very laboriously and in a somehow primitive way joint, assembled in new compositions, somehow 3D mosaics, in which their identity is being to a certain extent lost, but with a bit of focus still recognisable.
Certain concentration, but parallel distraction of her work is being projected also in the way we perceive the work of Anna, how we are getting lost in the details, our sight jumping from one part to another. We can perceive the character of the work and the used materials as a sort of abstraction of contemporary civilisation, its constant short term distraction, lack of concentration, mass quantity but inability to include the whole. There is also something rough and brutal on Anna’s works, in the impudency, rudimentarity of the treatment, that follows the cheapness of the original objects, but almost with somehow neurotic drive. Thousand times twisted threads, pieces of roller bearings and belt studs, are somehow an allegoric depiction of our accelerated presence, the inability to cease, the getting almost to a neurotic psychosis of a drug addict losing himself up to a total exhaustion in different details.
The bathroom of Anna Solal is definitely an impoverished one. A small room, musty with dampness and sweet smell of cheap parfume, stains of mold and bad colours of bad make-up. The beauty of the poor, too sweet, too fake. There is something intimate in it, but also repulsive. Something used. It is as if we are facing leftovers of what allowed us to put ourselves together.
In the drawings of towels, clothes scattered on the floor, old tooth brushes and flinged shoes we again get to somehow a neurotic, even halucinatory point. The pedicure set transforms itself into a traffic jam and the back view on a girl combing her hair in the repetition changes into some unclear nebula, color stain or a puddle of a body liquid. The assembling and composing is therefore also possible to read as somehow an attempt to hold together a harmony or a system in a situation, where the drive has liberated itself from original impulse and got into out of control spiral.
-Michal Novotný
Anna Solal, La salle de bain, 2019, exhibition view, Futura, Prague
Anna Solal, Birds with stars, 2017/2018, Shoes, kitchen tool, comb bike chains, ropes, tulle, metal thread
Anna Solal, Mirror, 2017/2018, Mirror, razor, tule, plastic, hairclips, metalic thread, ropes
Anna Solal, Mirror, 2017/2018, Mirror, razor, tule, plastic, hairclips, metalic thread, ropes
Anna Solal, La salle de bain, 2019, exhibition view, Futura, Prague
Anna Solal, The sink, 2019, broken Ipad-screen, metallic thread, bike chain, scarf, Ipad, plastic
Anna Solal, The sink, 2019, broken Ipad-screen, metallic thread, bike chain, scarf, Ipad, plastic
Anna Solal, The sink, 2019, broken Ipad-screen, metallic thread, bike chain, scarf, Ipad, plastic
Anna Solal, Sky night, 2019, Plastic, drawings with color pencil, scarf, plastic
Anna Solal, The toilet, 2019, Iphone screens, Ipad screen, tv-screen, metallic thread, stickers, ropes
Anna Solal, The toilet, 2019, Iphone screens, Ipad screen, tv-screen, metallic thread, stickers, ropes
Anna Solal, Brush, 2019, Iphone screens, drawing with color pencils, make-up, metallic thread, plexiglass, stickers
Anna Solal, Brush II, 2019, Iphone screens, drawing with color pencils, make-up, metallic thread, plexiglass, stickers, bag clips
Anna Solal, Brush III, 2019, drawing with colors pencils, broken Ipad screen, metlalic thread, plexiglass, stickers, flying compagny packaging
Anna Solal, Brush III, 2019, drawing with colors pencils, broken Ipad screen, metlalic thread, plexiglass, stickers, flying compagny packaging
Anna Solal, La salle de bain, 2019, exhibition view, Futura, Prague
Anna Solal, Toilet paper, 2019, Iphone screens, ropes, clothes, gucci belt, fabric, transparant paper, tule
Anna Solal, Toilet paper, 2019, Iphone screens, ropes, clothes, gucci belt, fabric, transparant paper, tule
Anna Solal, Pedicure set, drawing with colors pencils, ropes, metalic thread, plexiglass
Anna Solal, Shoes on carpet, 2018, drawing with colors pencils, scarfs, metalic thread, plexiglass, wood
Anna Solal, The jacket, drawing with colors pencils, scarfs, metalic thread, plexiglass, wood
Anna Solal, Towels, 2018, drawing with colors pencils, scarfs, metalic thread, plexiglass, wood
Anna Solal, Handkerchiefs, 2019, drawing with colors pencils, broken Ipad screen, metalic thread, plexiglass, wood
Anna Solal, Imperia bathroom, 2019, drawing with colors pencils, scarf, plastic, thread