Ten seconds, no more, or the magic is gone. That’s how long Slovakian-born artist Alexandra Barth gives herself to snap a picture of a vignette that she will eventually paint on canvas. If she waits too long, the moment evades her. “I mustn’t think about the composition,” says Barth. “It’s a terrible thing when I wait because I lose it or I start to speculate, I start to style it.”
Kitchen Cabinet Curtain, 2021, acrylic on canvas by Alexandra Barth.
A Door with a Copper Handle, 2023, acrylic on canvas by Alexandra Barth.
That lack of speculation allows Barth to revel in the purity of form. Her “pictures,” as she calls them, depict ordinary domestic scenes—plates precariously stacked on wooden shelves, a lonely towel hung on a hook, disheveled curtains, and geometric tiles—often at larger-than-life scale, creating a sacramental presence. Their photorealist quality is no accident: Barth uses an airbrush to mimic the light and transparency captured on camera. “I don’t like to leave the human touch on the surface,” she says.
Barth in her studio in Italy.
FILIP VANCOHer approach gives viewers the freedom to layer their own meaning over her delicate canvases, encouraging an instinctive response before any deeper message is superimposed. “I am only interested in framing reality in a way that becomes something uncanny,” she says. “It’s very ephemeral. It is not intellectual. I’m not thinking about what is going on.”
Barth’s scenes create a sort of “instant attraction,” says Sara Maria Salamone, cofounder of Mrs. Gallery in Maspeth, New York, where Barth held her first solo show in the United States. “There’s a long history in art of looking at domestic scenes and appreciating the banal. I think that Barth’s paintings are a continuation of that tradition, but she creates a deeper investigation.”
Tableware, 2024, acrylic on canvas by Alexandra Barth.
Hotel Towel, 2024, acrylic on canvas by Alexandra Barth.
Alexandra Barth is represented by Mrs. Gallery, Maspeth, New York.
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