Duda Bebek creates unsettling and at the same time unavoidably fascinating sculptures and paintings that explore the darkest corners of the ultra Contemporary world of the Internet and of our society depicting them with a style which is the one of an Expressionist artist of nowadays. She creates characters and shapes charged with emotion and strength which are merged and almost drenched into the weird landscapes and obscure atmospheres that surrounds them. Using gouache, water, plastic, gips and clay she fearlessly mixes materials moulding them in a language of her own.
Even if her works are undoubtedly figurative — the texture, the composition and transparencies force the eye to see them also in their abstraction, in the juxtapositions of washed out layers and tangible textures. In her work there is in fact a constant interplay between representation and abstract form, the same tension we find in its content, a vertiginous oscillation between reality and fantasy, a neon lighted realm where the flesh becomes an abstract surface which claims our attention in the same way the naked body does.
Duda Bebek work is pleasantly awkward, always provocative and it can trigger irreconcilable thoughts and reactions but never indifference. It is an unapologetic invite to explore an obscure part of ourselves, the one exceeding norms and society rules and that Duda Bebek is capable to deconstruct, reflect upon and depict in a never obvious way, walking the line between this world and a bewildering dream.
Natashas, as the artists explains, revolves around the concept of femininity – if that concept exists – as a living myth. The exhibition is inspired both by the contemporary over sexualised society and Classical art and consists of a series of new sculptures and paintings that confront the way of portraying femininity in the Contemporary social media culture. With Natashas, Duda Bebek explores the contrast between a femininity that appears extremely surreal and even frightening, but at the same time strangely beautiful and almost magical.
Duda Bebek is a Stockholm based Swedish artist whose practice draws inspiration from the contemporary imagery as much as from Classical and Modern art passing through a fascination for the surfaces and forms of abstraction. She studied at Valand Academy in Göteborg and Akademie Der Bild Enden Kunste in Vienna with professor Daniel Richter and graduated in 2012. She has exhibited her work at Galleri Steinsland—Berliner in Stockholm, Gillmeier Rech Gallery in Berlin, Büro Weltausstellung — Wiener Artfoundation in Vienna, Gallery David Risley in Copenhagen and GIFC in New York among the others. Her works appeared in magazines and publications as Purple magazine, Artlovers and Kunstkritikk and hers is the cover artwork of Sista skriket -En bok om mode, erotik och död written by Emma Veronica Johansson and Philip Warkander, published in January 2017. Natashas will be her first solo show with Nevven Gallery.
Duda Bebek, Natashas, Gothenburg: Nevven Editions, 2016 — Fanzine catalog