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 to grasp suddenly escapes.

Adapted from original text by: PhDr. Tereza Bruthansová
English Rhetoric Consultant and Copy Editor: Leora Lutz

Ira Svobodová obtained her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. Svobodová’s work has been displayed in the Czech National Gallery of Modern Art and in the Ministry of Culture in Prague. While representing CES at VOLTA NY 2015, her work was listed as a top ten “must see” booth at the fair by Artnet, and was recently placed on top 7 artists to buy now by Saatchi chief curator Rebecca Wilson.