For her exhibition ‚Out of Sight' at the List, Koťátková is creating several new groups of works that build upon her signature visual vocabulary. A group of new sculptures was modeled on illustrations of old animal traps. Many of Koťátková's earlier welded works are also structures of entrapment, harking back to antiquated orthopedic appliances, outmoded restraints for mental patients, or medieval torture devices. And yet, "I am not pointing…to some drastic imprisonment or actual physical violence," she has said, "but rather to the invisible, mental cages that we carry in ourselves supported by inner fears, anxieties, or those that others build around us because we do not fulfill society's expectations."
Eva Koťátková (b. 1982, Prague) takes as her central theme the individual's relationship to normative social structures and institutions, such as the government, school, the family, and the hospital. An obsessive collector of historical books on psychology, medicine, and social science, the artist culls images from these sources time and again for her installations, collages, and drawings. Counting Czech Surrealism and Absurdist fiction among her sources of inspiration, throughout her work she gives form to the invisible, disciplining force exerted by rules, conventions, and rituals.
