Adam Šakový‘s exhibition entitled A zostal iba popol (And Only Ashes Remain) a sequel of the exhibition Na počiatku bol oheň (In the Beginning, There Was Fire, Spot Gallery Prague, 2025), features a series of oil paintings and objects on which he has been systematically working since 2021. Thematically, he draws from the semantics of fire, opening up intimate and social themes, which he conveys with a universal visual language through metaphors, persowwnification, and symbolism. Šakový creates imaginative situations and explores emotions, behavioral archetypes, and the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. The works range from feelings of peace through gently growing uncertainty to disturbing scenes anchored in an environment in which time has stopped. We follow the central motifs in masterful painting situations which are close to realistic depictions and sometimes even photorealistic in form. His enchantment with painting structures, historicizing means, and a muted palette may be enough, but the magic of a complex experience comes at the moment of understanding what is “behind” the painting, what preceded the situation, and what will follow. One of the central lines of this new series is the body and performative work with corporeality, thanks to which the cycle is more personal and intimate than the previous ones which mainly represented redefinitions of visual appropriations. The characters exist in non-specific environments. They wait stiffly, cannot decide, and perhaps seek refuge in (temporarily) safe places – whether physical or mental. They communicate with gestures and body language. They are alone and their faces cannot be seen. The author does not specify their identity in more detail, leaving them in ambivalent situations, naked or dressed in fireproof suits. Šakový emphasizes the symbolism and meaning of the objects and materials he uses, which become carriers of ideas and memories, communicate principles of transformation, and record processes. Depicted in situations that lack logic and connection with reality, they blur the boundaries between the possible and the impossible.
Adam Šakový (born in 1987 in Zvolen) lives and works in Bratislava. He studied at Klaudia Kosziba’s Atelier mal+by at the Bratislava Academy of Fine Arts and Design, and has been a multiple finalist for the VÚB Painting of the Year award and a finalist for the ESSL Art Award (2013). Šakový’s work, which is based on realistic depiction combined with post-conceptual thinking, can be found in public and private collections. His artistic program is driven by a fascination with the painting medium and a systematic investigation of strategies for depicting and interpreting visual information. He works in defined cycles in which intimate and universal themes alternate. He bends the painting language as needed without resisting the appropriation of historical canons, compositions, colors or procedures. His work moves between stylized still lifes and figurative compositions, and the depiction of ordinary objects, portraits and figures in relatively calm situations.
