The current art project of the young artist Amálka Ľudmila Valenčíková (* 1980, Krompachy) entitled “BOHYŇE” is a visual exploitation of her actual creative program, which thematically deals with gender issues, women’s perception of motherhood and intimacy. At the same time, the author’s ambition is to bring new solutions or sculptural environments, which will be the stepping up to further research on this topic. Valenčíková, as a graduate of the Studio of Free Creativity of Professor Juraj Bartusz at the Faculty of Arts in Košice (2006) has long devoted to women themes in the field of soft sculpture, object or installation. To underline the fragility of the sculptural shapes, the author prefers soft sculptures and materials such as waste textiles, recycled foam, battens, tights, twine or polyurethane. To this, she adds a thick cloth, a cloth diaper or a hospital tarpaulin. The very choice of non-traditional and soft materials also creates a mental state of the heroines and metaphorical possibilities of reading crisis situations and states.
Based on the name of the Goddess project (written with a soft diacritic, which is the Spiš dialect), the main theme of the artist is “materialization of ideas about the intimate space of a woman” and “intimacy of a mother melting in space”. It is a kind of “female” swearing or hoarding (for example, the Goddess! Where I stunned this bully), which is used in a momentary failure or uncontrollable situation and releases tension and emotions. It is this moment of coping with such a situation, with the reactions of an imperfect physical body and unpleasant mental states that is the main platform for the exhibited collection of Valečíková’s plastic.
It is a special installation of several soft, full-length female figures, rolled up, folded like chewing gums with outstretched limbs. The sculptures are made of foam (with a hidden solid structure) so that they are amorphous and positionable at the same time. They have their own pedestals or are placed directly on the floor. In one corner, there is a crouched, stitched figure of various pieces of foam and waste material from the puppet theatre with a bowed head and an enlarged bluish bust. This is followed by a large “goddess” of coarse foam from children’s mattresses, which tries to proudly hold her rolled bloated body, but has her arms outstretched to the ground. Another woman is glued from two foam layers with textile reinforcement and a strangely stretchable torso and limbs. Both have a final polyurethane spray (to keep them together).
There is a large figure lying on the floor, torn from recycled foam and painted with dry pastel. She lies helplessly on a round flowered sheet. This is followed by “fallen” tiny cotton figures of women with drooping heads and pulled out breasts, tightly tied with twine, or stretched into the tight tights of the pantyhose.
The overall somewhat difficult atmosphere of Amálka Valenčíková’s scattered bodies and gumoid female figures is also supported by the attic, black-painted exhibition space with a small stage. The exhibition collection thus suggestively develops the themes of women, motherhood and the intimacy of her “injured” body, which is a successful continuation of the previous jubilee exhibition “Space IN(dentity)” in the Gallery of Spiš Artists in Spišská Nová Ves in 2020.
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