Dead Skin and Sugar

Lydia Patafta
Curated by / Kuratiert von Vasja Nagy

Levitation is a state o mind?and body

Lydia Patafta is a Slovak artist who studied in Vienna and is now based in Croatia. In her paintings she creates mixed emotions made of sweetness and bitterness. At the first thought it might seem like the eternal Eros and Thanatos are dancing here again. And the first assumption is not entirely wrong. These two basic instincts have always been great topics in art. Roughly interpreted they represent life and death respectively, but this dialectical explanation seems to be missing the magical ingredient. The system of duality is perfectly imagined through yin & yang principle, white and black, light and darkness catching each other and being contained one in the other but never really mix into the grey world of shadows. The black is passive, designating negative flow of energy, the destructive kind and has been attributed to death. But death does not mean the end of existence but rather transformation into something else, which makes the whole picture a bit more complex. Every destructive energy has its creative antipode and there must be something created as well. Iconography of colour which corresponds to this division usually uses black, red and white that respectively stand for transformative force, fertile creativity, and pure creation. In classical art this triad is often depicted by three female figures showing different stages of human life. In Lydia Patafta?s painting not just the two from the first impression meet but all three principles are simultaneously present.