The exhibition Soft Touches brings together the work of Lucie Rosicka and Nikola Emma Ryšavá, two artists whose work has long been concerned with themes of the body, identity and intimacy in a contemporary world strongly influenced by digital culture. 

Lucie Rosicka has long worked with self-portraiture as a means of exploring the female body, beauty and self-knowledge in her work. Her embroidered images often have a diary-like character – they capture everyday situations, bodily transformations and moments that are usually hidden or taboo. She sees depicting one's own body as one of the most honest ways of expression, because it is through it that one can convey an experience that is personal, but at the same time understandable to others.

Nikola Emma Ryšavá's work is based on inner experience and works with the body as a carrier of emotions, relationships and psychological states. Her sculptures often oscillate between the human and the inhuman. In her conception, the monster does not become the opposite of man, but a mirror of him - a disturbing version of ourselves that reveals what we do not want to see. The sculptures do not show something alien, but rather what is present in us, only repressed or hidden. In her work, the motif of the mask repeatedly appears as a symbol of the role or identity one creates for the environment. Here, the mask does not only mean hiding, but also the pressure of society to make the individual conform to a certain idea of perfection. 

Together, the authors open up a topic that is very relevant today, especially for the generation growing up with social networks. The constant need to be seen, to share one's own image and to respond to the gaze of others creates an environment in which identity is formed under the pressure of expectations and comparisons. Soft Touches stands between two poles - between the external image and the internal experience, between the need to show oneself and the desire to remain oneself in an environment of constant visibility. 

curator: Aneta Kopecká