Adult Candy

Kristina Bajilo’s first solo exhibition challenges the social role of female artists by using popular culture’s visual elements in her works. Her paintings, like skillfully constructed traps, have alluring colors that evoke wellbeing but also reveal deep hidden tension through recognized motifs presented in fragments. The tension is a critical stance towards the reality of values stemming from popular culture that are both claimed and rejected at the same time, and the exhibition blurs the boundaries between pleasure and anxiety. Bajilo’s medium of choice is traditional oil on canvas, which reflects the transformation of art from a spiritual discipline into a mechanism for piling solutions for vanity, amusement, and destruction. The tangibility of her paintings on wood adds to their objectiveness, making shapes more explicit and easily accessible. The recent works invite the observer to join in and take part in decoding the icons of consumerist society, making the party irresistible. Overall, Bajilo’s exhibition offers a critical look at the age of material plenitude and freedom of choice and highlights the consequences of the easy availability and ease of shopping in the 21st century.