“1+1 = 11” Architectured Emotions

Kristina Kulakova is an art photographer based in Vienna. Her vision of architecture, art, people, and objects reveal an existential quest for harmony, a desire to make peace with herself and her surroundings. After several years of travelling around the world, Kristina is developing a studio practice centered around still life photography, reinventing the genre in unexpected compositions.

The exhibition presented at Hotel Altstadt features ten diptychs bringing together Kristina Kulakova’s early works on architecture and her current exploration of still life. The architectural photographs extract formal details of the buildings, bringing them close to abstraction, with a clear search for minimalism and purity. The still lifes are constructions requesting the artist’s hand, sometimes bearing narratives, always carrying emotions. They are fulfilling Kristina’s need for sensuality and structure.

These diptychs allow the artist to reveal the common thread of her work, a confrontation of the organic and the mineral, nature and culture, a constant struggle to find balance and beauty in the chaos of life.

As the title suggests, the pairs also question the sum of two entities. What will be the outcome of these encounters? What will it spark?
“We grow up into distinct mature personalities, we don’t merge with another, but rather go alongside” answers the artist.

These diptychs are about inner truth as an antidote to global lies.