Oil on wood with steel frame
2024

Works from Pansy series were originally created for an exhibition in the former Klinik Penzing in Vienna, designed by the architect Otto Wagner. Yurková drew inspiration from an architectural detail of the building’s windows—a square within a square, a frame within a frame.

Executed in oil on wood, the paint is rolled onto the panels as if intended for printing, but left untouched; after drying, the artist carves into the surface, producing a relief-like effect. The works depict fragments of bodies and pansies. Pansies serve as a symbol of boundaries and demarcation, often defining front gardens and marking the division between private and public space, between one’s own and another’s.

The “windows” in the compositions offer a view of the body, though it remains ambiguous whether it is inside or outside. This ambiguity places the viewer in a state of subtle ambivalence and a position of voyeuristic observation. The delicate rendering of plants and the body is contained within a steel frame, creating a paradox between the fragility of the subject and the starkness of the gaze imposed upon it.