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The Book Club in Shoreditch presents Girls, an art exhibition featuring the work of Berlin-based artist Martina Paukova, launching on 8th of February.
After studying illustration at Camberwell Collage of art, Paukova recently moved to Berlin where she is a celebrated illustrator for clients such as Pull&Bear, Converse, Google, Guardian or New York Times.
In a world that encourages girls to be glamorous, to pose and perform at all times, in her first major London show Paukova presents a collection of images celebrating the beauty in the relaxed, domestic, and off-duty female form where women are truly themselves.
Her illustrated girls feel familiar. We find them lying, sitting, standing or kneeling, with an occasional laptop, phone or a man thrown in. Plants and steaming coffee cups are compulsory.
Girls are lanky and awkward, set in Paukova’s staple geometric and flattened domestic environments. In these images Paukova repeatedly both celebrates and mocks the daily and the banal; light and humorous mood with sporadic darker streak is a must.
Paukova says: First and foremost – I am one of them! So I am very well versed with these situations and self-made worlds. Also, girls are way more fun to draw than men, their hair shape is more interesting and the overall air is somewhat sweeter and more organic.
These domestic environments are little self-made worlds of sort. Away from the outside world where we are pushed to pose and perform, it is usually at home, within the four walls, where we are at our most natural and non performing selves. I guess I like capturing setups like these – super banal and off-duty.
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