Erika Bornová

Art (Click images below to enlarge)

About this work

Erika Bornová: I’ll Do Everything and Bed

Erika Bornová’s sculptures, which largely focus on women’s issues, are often created of fragile polystyrene and have been described as being in the style of “magical realism.” Whether taking the form of group sculptures or separate figures, they appear seemingly idyllic, but often conceal a story of complex human relationships. Some sculptures retain the white color characteristic of polystyrene; others are decorated with polychrome or accompanied by various features.

Bornová’s I’ll Do Everything series is inspired by the pages of the popular Czech advertisement weekly, Annonce. The series of fifteen small polystyrene sculptures of prostitutes placed in tiny ascetic “rooms” reflects the strange ambiguity of marketable sex that promises to reveal the unknown and, at the same time, exposes the lack of invention, banality and poverty. Erika Bornová is interested in the contrast between reality and illusion—between the promised paradise of endless pleasure in the embrace of a skillful and passionate sexual goddess and the banality of amateur photographs of females in poses from X-rated B-movies with all kinds of erotic “munition”, including home-made SM instruments, artificial furs, cheap lace underwear, and silicon breasts. This variety of items is represented in the photographs in the Annonce ads that she displays alongside of her sculptures. She uses fragile and light polystyrene to cut the most delicate details, such as a fur collar casually enlaced around the neck, and then she polychromes them. Finally, she covers some of them in wax so that their smooth surface looks—as in the depicted scenes—improperly perfect and immaculate. She decorates the negligee with beads that are a cheap simulation of the luxury goods. Such trinkets are applied here as a lure, as a delusory image of beauty, luxury, and delight that obscures the misery and poverty of reality.

Two of her sculptures from the I’ll do Everything series are depicted here, along with Bed, which is part of another project.