View the online publication we released for the 20th anniversary of the painting competition Maľba.
2nd place
Dúbravský Andrej
Botanical garden in Bratislava
2011, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 200 cm
(*1987, Nové Zámky)
Since 2008 he has been studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava at the Department of Painting and Other Media, under the supervision of Professor Ivan Csudai and Professor Daniel Fischer. Together with Matej Fabian, the author is probably one of the most promising emerging figures on the contemporary painting scene.
His large, juicy paintings with their distinctive iconography caught the eye as soon as he exhibited them at school surveys. Painted with a passion for painterly techniques, these almost breathtaking canvases have gradually become more and more practised. But more than his craftsmanship, the author captivated with themes and themes anchored on a strong autobiographical or even diary basis, on which he gradually and systematically built his own iconography. Some paintings literally function as therapeutic paintings. Perhaps the most common is the self-portrait and the use of the artistic (and semantic) potential of the bunny ears motif. English may serve to explain, for rather than being interested in Rabbit, the author is interested in Bunny, and we still associate Bunny rather hesitantly with the man. Although he himself claims to "love rabbits," the resulting expressions of that love are expressions on canvas were all the more disturbing because, in combination with the self-portrait, they refer directly to issues of sexual identity and speak quite openly about homosexuality, narcissism and self-love, but also about confusion, fragility and abuse. Although it will sound old-world, the submitted work is painterly mature and represents the better in the panorama of the artist's work, but it scores points for the fact that there remains something uncomfortable, challenging and at the same time naked in it. Paradoxically, the tender ears make his characters disturbing and strangely perverse, which is only helped by the choice of title.
(The text is from the catalogue for the competition Painting 2011, A. Kusá)
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