Galamb ThordayVERSUS

Lush, decadent, glossy and glamour - Galamb Thorday depicts in her painting a world of lust, thereby entering into a kind of cognitive dissonance.

Using oil on canvas, she portrays a world of desires. An euphoria that is translated by the representation of women in opulence, champagne towers, oysters' platters, jewelry as well as animals and landscapes that open the doors of a cosmos full of passion, thirst and urges. These patterns coming from different image banks, social media platforms and her own archives, are assembled, piece by piece, into luxuriant compositions like collages. "The stylistic device of exaggeration is inevitable for me", says Galamb Thorday, opening up various dimensions about the question of formal appropriation in Painting.

For the backgrounds, which clearly contrast with the utopian motifs, Galamb Thorday applies mixed metallic pigments underneath the painting. Exotic gardens and floral scenes dragg the figures - united in a pastel spectrum voluntarily chosen between a beige and a light blue - down to the foreground as if they were behind frosted glass. Softly, they appear to us, and for an instant, we get the feeling of taking part of these particular "golden moments".

Nevertheless, behind every snapshot lies a second and contradictory truth. Glamour VERSUS compulsion, glorious VERSUS depressive, beauty VERSUS addiction. Because all that glitters is no gold like every story has two sides.

Galamb Thorday has already been represented in several group exhibitions in Germany and abroad. The exhibition VERSUS is her first solo exhibition. The artist lives and works in Leipzig.