In 2013, the CARTOON CALLED LIFE adventure begins as an antidote to the stress of the fashion world, which Juraj has been part of since 2007. He creates a comic featuring a little rabbit named “Bunny”; gay and white, in a humorous and colorful universe.
Juraj’s work is strongly influenced by his life-lasting job as a textile designer. In his work he uses bright colors, floral and geometric forms to create eye-pleasing pieces, which often balance on the edge of decoration and textile design. The aim is to evoke a positive feeling in spectator’s mind, either evoked by a joke, a smiling face of Bunny or by a bright color spectrum. In most pieces we can find repeating attributes of Bunny’s world - pizzas, coffee mugs, stars, icosahedrons, circles and last but not least, “beardiful” men.
This exhibition shows the wide range of Juraj’s creations from paintings mixed with embroidery, silkscreened posters, and original drawings. He fell in love with the screen-printing technique already during his school years at Academy of fine arts in Bratislava, where he uses both on fabric and for his posters with bright and vibrant colors. He also immerses us in his world and his way of observing, through transparent colored filters. This technique, present on his original drawings, is a legacy of one of his art teachers that helps the artist see in a composition all imperfections that one wouldn’t spot by looking at it with a regular white paper.
In over 6 years, Juraj has created more than 1,500 cartoons, which have been published online, on a clothing collection and in the form of two art books: “Cartoon Called Life” in 2017 and “Bunny’s New Adventures “in October 2019. CARTOON CALLED LIFE, which started as a fun project, quickly became a successful networking event and a very popular comic with a growing community (36,000 followers on Instagram @ cartoon.called.life) CARTOON CALLED LIFE is active in the LGBT scene, for 3 years now as a proud partner of Antwerp Pride, does art collaboration with other gay artists, and supports and co-hosts international LGBT events.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
The gallery is open from Tuesday to Saturday, from 2 PM to 7 PM.
The exhibition runs from November 27th, 2019 until January 12th, 2020.
ALFALIBRA Gallery, 324, rue Saint-Martin, 75003 Paris, France
ABOUT JURAJ STRAKA
Juraj Straka was born in 1984 in Bratislava, Slovakia, he currently lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. He studied graphic design at a private art school in Bratislava, then had a master’s degree in textile design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. In 2007, he won the international textile design contest “La mode s’exprime, elle s’imprime” in Lyon, that opened him the door to the textile and fashion industry, where he works as textile designer for various international high-end fashion brands until present. In 2014 he received the award “30 most talented people under age of 30 in Slovakia” given by the magazine Forbes in Slovakia. In 2017, he met Laurent Fierens and together they created the company CARTOON CALLED LIFE.
ABOUT ALFALIBRA GALLERY
Place of trend and creation, Alfalibra is located in the heart of the Haut Marais and between Gaité Lyrique, Musée des Arts Numériques, the Couture Atelier of Mr Gauliter. Alfalibra Gallery connects with an international vision: fashion, luxury, photography, art, high tech... but also with society and ethics.
This laboratory of art and fashion, designed by its curator Frédéric Fontan, is an open gate toward the world aiming at the interconnection between artists and sponsors, celebrities and performances, and the public’s reaction. Each annual program will follow a central theme that is adapted to international news, social causes, artistic proposals and special orders.
Alfalibra Gallery proposes a reflection on “Transcendence” evoking the overcoming of the separation between the arts, cultures and communities through photography, video and installation testimonies, as well as discourse.
