Ira Svobodová is inspired by the world of architecture. Her work features modernistic geometrical compositions in pure color tones. She employs a laborious technique applying special acrylic gels to glaze pure, unmixed colors. Blending spatial dimensions; Playing with possibzilities and impossibilities; Hidden anticipation only partially uncovered. These are common themes of Czech painter Ira Svobodová’s two new bodies of work, Noir and Papercut. In each series there is a shift in her painting from her earlier works. The new direction is balanced yet unsettling—implementing optical deceptions that teeter on the edge of abstract and recognizable, between two- and three-dimensional spaces.

Together these bodies of work reveal that it is sometimes better to stay in a realm of uncertainty, groping between what appears to be a reality, what seems physically touchable, yet where any attempt …