Pavla Gajdošíková, a graduate of the studio led by Vladimír Skrepl and Jiří Kovanda at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, is an artist whose starting point can be found in the seemingly most traditional positions, i.e. in painting and drawing. However, the development of her work over recent years displays an interesting shift. A feature that foreshadows these changes is her interest in architecture as a socio-cultural phenomenon and a question of space and the perception thereof. As far back as her cycle of paintings of villas in the Baba colony from 2002 Gajdošíková was grappling with the question of the balance between the sensual and expressive values of painting and the rational geometric abstraction of the materials of functionalist architecture.
This problematic is taken up in a series of paintings from 2010 which depict the modernist architecture in her neighbourhood. Here too there is a tension arising from the contrast between the softness of the painter’s brush and the rational spatial compositions of architecture. These cycles reveal how important to the artist is the fundamental phenomenological question of the perception of architectonic forms around us. However, equally important is the internal space that comprises the interiors of homes and privacy. This is to be seen not only in her cycle of paintings Ve dvě v noci / At Two O’clock in the Morning (2008), but also in her drawings, which are a significant part of her oeuvre. The series of drawings I Am Staring at the Corner (2006–2010) captures moments from the artist’s immediate domestic surroundings through her own private perspective. Drawing, a delicate and intimate medium, becomes the conduit for an elegant, visually simplified approach to objects defining intimacy as the reality in question. From this cycle onwards we can follow a creative development in which drawing becomes a crucial tool for the artist balanced between the two-dimensional level of the paper and the spatial augmentation of architecture.
It was not long before she moved to an understanding of space outside herself, as we see in the animated video XYZ (2009), in which Gajdošíková linked drawing with a modular game with paper blocks. Soon after this the artist returned to her interest in the functionalist colony in a work called Baba (2010). The use of animated paper models, often combined with drawn collage and photographs of architecture, culminated in another animated video called 1147 Addresses (2010), again featuring the artist’s interest in the architecture of the neighbourhood where she lives in Podolí, Prague. This led logically to more recent works in which she uses paper models in installations. This might involve the illuminated kinetic installation Habitat (2011), or the installation 60 procent naší kriminality je vymyšleno gádži / 60 Percent of Our Criminality is Dreamt Up by Gadjos (2014), in which she indicated the socio-cultural level of the architecture of the Romany district of Předlic in Ústí nad labem in the form of “model-maker’s” mock-ups of architecture.
Another aspect of her personal perception of architectonic and urban space is to be seen in the video Ranní procházká / Early Morning Walk (2013), in which, similarly to her older work for the exhibition Poslední prostor pro člověka / Last Space for Man (2012), she combines the linear depiction of movement along a surface with the expressive possibilities of drawing. This combination of drawing with her interest in architectural space and both its personal and broader cultural links ensures for Pavla Gajdošíková an interesting individual creative position on the Czech art scene.
