START POINT PRIZE – Prize for emerging artists

The paintings and drawings by Alicja Gaskon are characterized by dramatic obsessive drawing in the Expressionist tradition but also from classic academic figurative drawing transferred into grotesque hyperbole. In her explorations, Gaskon works with a wide variety of different media: she combines painting and drawing with photographic collage topping it off with real human hair. Such extreme gestures correspond with the dominate theme: from a psychological inquiry of human relations and sexuality she passes to figurative apocalyptic scenes. Gaskon plays a sophisticated game here: she replaces integrity with decomposition and anatomical cruelty, both in terms of content and primarily through the original use of expressive brushwork. (pv)