Born: 2002, Slovakia
Based in: Slovakia
Instagram: @bikacriesinart
Biography:
Gabriela Genčúrová has been drawn to art since childhood, always sketching, painting, and finding ways to make things with her hands. At fourteen, she received her first paints and felt an immediate shift. Painting became a necessity rather than a hobby, something she knew would shape her life.
Despite her early passion, she never attended formal extracurricular art programs. She went on to study Fine Arts at university in a painting atelier but left after two years to protect her mental health and reclaim her sense of creative freedom. That time outside of school became formative. Without academic expectations, she was able to explore instinctively, producing work in bursts that were sometimes intense, sometimes chaotic, but always honest.
Gabriela describes her creative process as a balance between therapy and self-destruction. Freedom is essential. Experimentation, mistakes, and looseness guide her. When she creates without pressure, she finds joy, self-discovery, and a release that feels like life energy. That is when art becomes most fulfilling.
Artistic Practice:
Gabriela works primarily with airbrush and acrylics, a medium she initially resisted but eventually embraced over the past three years. The airbrush’s soft, dreamy gradients echo the ethereal qualities that define her themes of surrealism and nostalgia.
Her work combines surrealist imagery, emotional symbolism, and digital age aesthetics. She creates dreamlike scenes filled with distortion, humor, and quiet unease. Recurring ideas include the inner child, identity, transformation, unfulfillment, nostalgia, self-destruction, and subtle forms of spirituality. These themes often take shape in unusual animals, misshapen characters, or symbolic objects that carry emotional weight.
Gabriela sees her work as a fusion of her personality: humorous, melancholic, receptive, and deeply internal. While digital culture influences her visual language, her primary inspiration comes from within. Whether her emotions, her relationships, and her personal history. Each piece becomes a symbolic puzzle, a way for her to decode and process her inner world, sometimes playfully, sometimes with raw emotional clarity.
Selected Exhibitions & Projects:
Summer Artist Series — Bika Collection
Collaboration with Odlyworkshop, Seoul, June 2024
Maturity is Immaturities: boring uncle — Group Exhibition
Camden Open Air Gallery, London, June 27, 2025
This exhibition held special meaning as her first international presentation. Seeing her work in London, engaging with visitors, and feeling the energy of the shared space was a transformative moment in her practice.
Animated paintings for DJ set at Studio 1111, Berlin
Digital Exhibition — Saatchi Art Slovakia
Press & Features:
Interview — Gabriela Genčúrová, OVERSTANDARD: Culture & Creativity
Interview — In Conversation: On Instinct, Symbolism, and the Quiet Power of the Surreal
Collaboration Feature — ODW x BIKA, odlyworkshop
Digital Exhibitions — Saatchi Art Slovakia
