ACFNew York
When she was 16 years old, Zenita Komad left the Austrian province of Carinthia for Vienna to study at the University for Applied Arts. Today, just 28 years old, the daughter of an opera singer is a darling of the Austrian contemporary art scene and has worked with a host of renowned artists from many different genres. Despite her prolificness, and a plethora of projects ranging from videos to drawings, installations, and light sculptures, her focus remains on painting. Most recently, her paintings have made the jump to three-dimensionality, in the form of oversized sculptural paintings and objects reminiscent of Oldenburg's soft sculptures. An example is Californication, 2007, a piece involving the artist's own performative self-image and hearkening back to the tradition of performance art and even Vienna's Actionists. The pink breast sculpture is painted over with a grotesque black face, and while Komad nestles herself comfortably into the object she also leaves her arms dangling, implying that she is not ready for further contact or touch. This ambivalence between affection and aversion is typical of the artist's work. Another theme in Komad's oeuvre is the construction and definition of identity, most recently with a focus on clothing. As a visual vocabulary, clothing imbues the body with meaning and constructs its identity within a social environment. This is evident in recent pieces like Ode an die Kunst (Ode to Art), 2008, in which she dresses canvasses with oversized pieces of clothing: The constructed entity cloaks the inner life of the soul, creating an ambivalence between the inner and outer self.For further reading see Zenita Komad's catalog "Zenita Komad, Opus IV, Selected Works" 2008.