Marie Lukáčová | Frugo
05/06/21–29/08/21

In a world of aspirational images, enterprising young women and magic spells, monsters, body parts and machines emerge from and dip back into animated surfaces of saturated color. The camera sways to a rap beat, scanning the landscape from horseback, where vaginas grow through rock while children’s voices sing of neverending debt. In the solo exhibition Frugo, Marie Lukáčová uses her highly developed artistic language to present image as a tool for the production and control of desire within global capitalism.

The phenomena of the present—fantasy genre, online commodified pop culture YouTube such as adds and viral videos of Lil Nas X as a cowboy—are only a departure point for the artist’s exploration, which she then processes in her distinctive way, of creating a narrative collage interspersed with her own hand-drawn material, stories, and songs. In her film A nail torn from the invisible hand (2021), drawings and installation created specifically for the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové, these elements serve as a conscious exploration of how the female body is represented and the entangled relationship between the circulation of images, money and sex. For Lukáčová, imagining an alternative social order starts with personal, everyday relationships and transactions, populating them with monsters, magic and polyamory, where image is the main currency.