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Her paintings are full of nails and stigmata surreal, sadomasochistic images that depict male ruin and female power.
Slowak wrote to me that she, a young woman in a Catholic country, occupies a rupturing position.
She added, I find it difficult to function in communities in general.
From the Cycle, White Balls on the Wallgives us an icon of neurotic obsession.
A womans hand holds a penis, exposing its underside.
Around the wrist there is a bracelet with a cross as its clasp.
Slowaks technique is partly classical.
Slowak is painting her love life, her fantasies, and the murky night world of her desire.
Gingeras calls it auto-psychoanalysis.
InYou Were Cold in My Shadow,a naked couple stands in front of a burning building.
The man is missing an eye, which is located in the womans mouth.
He licks at it, as if to say, This is mine.
I want it back.
He is balding, effeminate, long, narrow.
She is in control, gazing at the viewer.
Its a picture of dismemberment and defilement and decadence, though the couple exudes a strange sense of comfort.
InSelf Portrait With Sperm and Blood Crossing, Slowak is seated, posed like some academic nude.
A man ejaculates at her.
Here is both attraction and avoidance fused into one flesh.
She is frozen in space, staring at us.
Apparently, the mother of her ex-boyfriend would tell her, You have sperm on the brain.
What a strange expression.
Here, Slowak becomes a carnivorous flower, seductive, evil, a deaths head.
These days, artists often crawl into older styles of painting and inject them with new electrifying subject matter.
These interventions are coming from women, people of color, and other underrepresented artists.
An abortion, in other words, which can put you in jail in Poland.
She seems to be saying that there is still medieval horror in the modern world.
