1+1 = 11 Architectured Emotions

Opening: June 5, 2023, hosted by Saskia Wiesenthal.
Location: Level 41 {Hotel Altstadt Vienna} Kirchengasse 41, 1070 Wien
Guided tour: June 10, 2023 | 2 PM

Kristina Kulakova is an art photographer based in Vienna. Her vision of architecture, art, people, and objects reveal an existential quest for harmony, a desire to make peace with herself and her surroundings. After several years of travelling around the world, Kristina is developing a studio practice centered around still life photography, reinventing the genre in unexpected compositions.
The exhibition that will be presented at Hotel Altstadt features ten diptychs bringing together Kristina Kulakova’s early works on architecture and her current exploration of still life. The architectural photographs extract formal details of the buildings, bringing them close to abstraction, with a clear search for minimalism and purity. The still lifes are constructions requesting the artist’s hand, sometimes bearing narratives, always carrying emotions. They are fulfilling Kristina’s need for sensuality and structure.
These diptychs allow the artist to reveal the common thread of her work, a confrontation of the organic and the mineral, nature and culture, a constant struggle to find balance and beauty in the chaos of life.
As the title suggests, the pairs also question the sum of two entities. What will be the outcome of these encounters? What will it spark?
“We grow up into distinct mature personalities, we don’t merge with another, but rather go alongside” answers the artist.
These diptychs are about inner truth as an antidote to global lies.

About the curator:
Elisabeth Karolyi is a French curator and journalist based in Paris and Vienna. Her fields of research are contemporary art, architecture, design, film and photography, their correspondences, the perception of space and the expression of emotions. She is the curator of digital art hub 1703, for the promotion of digital arts, and of the exhibition “Building Stories”, planned for 2024.

About Kristina Kulakova:
Kristina Kulakova (b.1989) is a visual artist and freelance photographer with background in creative production, communications, and marketing in culture. She is specializing in still life, travel and lifestyle photography and works worldwide. Based between Vienna, AT and Portugal.