Andrea Lipkovičová

The academic sculptor ANDREA LIPKOVIČOVÁ and her husband Peter were two of the founding members of the C+S art collective, and they remain permanent members to this day. They were actively involved in the alternative happenings of the unofficial Košice art scene (for example, the unsanctioned art exhibition held at Peter’s apartment, 1987; communal art studios; Prešparty, Prešov, 1988; and Laboratórium, Prešov, 1992). After graduating from the School of Applied Art in Košice, she continued her studies at the Department of Sculptural Restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She is now a respected restorer of historical statues and furniture. In her creative work, she focuses on various media, including drawing, painting, photography and installations. She has participated in many solo and group exhibitions both in Slovakia and abroad. She lives and works in Košice, where she currently teaches at the School of Applied Art.

Her main creative outlet has become “… tiny sketches and small format works which correspond to her meticulous attention to detail”.[1] This perception of the world has gradually expanded to encompass other media, such as her photography and video art. Her contribution to the current exhibition project is a fragile intermedia object titled NOTES FROM A DIARY, (acrylics on textile, video, 2015/2026). This video artwork of a white canvas with white silhouette figures displaying sketched notes depicting minimalistic everyday situations was in fact created in cooperation with her son Dávid, a collaboration which is itself a form of artistic symbiosis.

She also contributes a series of photographs titled FINDINGS (MINOR BEAUTIES) – which are subtitled In Wintertime, At Home, In the Garden, all of which date from 2025. The artist says that: “… I find photos with this mood in moments in which I am concentrating on seeking out beauty, or poetry, in the very places where it happens to be at that time…” Even in places which she knows well, she is suddenly surprised by a flash of light, a shadow; something is there that had not been there before. “… those exceptional days, moments when I am jolted out of the everyday world, even though I have not taken a single step further. Natural light, the Sun, the air, the breeze, water and wind, the seasons – they all intersect, and I just happen to be there where the details, whether large or small, congregate in that one instant, and are transformed into photography.”

Applying her own sensitivity, she illustrates the fragility of the fleeting moment – a knot draws two luminous surfaces together, an instant immersed in the awareness of understanding; a flickering six-pointed star; a tiny form climbing to the mountain peak; or graphic symbols – letters which depict the realm of nature. Andrea says that: “if the definition of symbiosis is the shared coexistence of two species regardless of the nature of that relationship, then the creation of my photographic cycles is a form of elective symbiosis… Because all of the participating elements of a photograph simply exist entirely independently from me, but my life depends on their very presence”. Her creative approach can perhaps be compared to the Japanese poetics of wabi-sabi, the aesthetic which finds beauty in randomness, imperfection, transience and simplicity.

Andrea reminds us that beauty often lies concealed beneath the surface of the visible world. This is her visual diary; every photograph represents a dispatch from places where things are happening; she gives these manifestations a voice, allowing them to speak in their (or her?) own language and form.

Edita Vološčuková, project curator

[1] https://lofflermuzeum.sk/sk/aktuality/styri-strany-tajomstva-denniky-krajiny/detail/101