Antonia Gurkovska

Antonia Gurkovska is a contemporary artist born in 1984, in Sofia, Bulgaria. Influenced by the detail and richness of European Renaissance painting, her early works were largely figurative. Later she began to expand beyond the conventional framework of painting, removing figures and transforming the material into the subject of her paintings, an approach that developed with a conscious awareness of the body itself. This evolution positions materiality as both object and narrative and as an extension of the artist’s physical and intimate relationship to material in the process of mark-making. The paintings are often executed with large scale gestures, specific choices of color and precision, yet open to chance. The works often transform into site specific installations addressing the architecture and subtly altering it to allow different perceptions. The installations technically resemble the indexical repetitive action similar to the way the dots in the paintings are applied: all together contributing to forming a large grid painting whose surface would flip content.

Gurkovska received her MFA degree in Painting from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA degree in Painting from the National Academy of Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and fellowships including the George and Anne Siegel Fellowship,  Fulbright Scholarship and an Erasmus Student Exchange Grant. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and America.

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