Andrea Kršul works with gender-related topics, primarily in relation to herself and her own history. She describes her method, which involves the use tools from the world of psychology, as a kind of radical narcissism through which she tries to break through the surface of social conventions that manipulate us from behind the scenes.
The installation Process, which explores her relationship to parental authority, consists of a white canvas containing only the meaningless sentence CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND US written in large letters. Upon closer inspection, however, the viewer discovers that the letters are filled in with smaller text that repeats the command DON’T EXIST. We see the first sentence first, while the second we notice only when up close. The artist thus metaphorically expresses the idea that a banal message may hide another meaning within the speaker’s subconscious – a meaning that can be deciphered using the methods of psychoanalysis.
The three computer drawings entitled The Inner Child refer to the theory according to which part of our psychological structure is constructed during the period of our first perceptions until roughly the age of 8 or 10 – the period during which our so-called “inner child” is formed. In her work, the artist has attempted to visualize her inner child as a kind of monster that embodies her irrational fear of her own unconscious.
Kršul’s final work, My Five Minutes, is a reference to Andy Warhol’s famous statement that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Here, she looks at the manipulative nature of the advertising and cosmetics industries. The work is conceived as a series of objects consisting of the artist’s self-portraits and objects with symbolic meaning (coat-hangers – the world of fashion, break – decomposition, honey – the ideal body, etc.).
Marcel Fišer