IVANA VLADISLAVA

IVANA VLADISLAVA
Inner Beauty is for Ugly People
29 August - 3 September 2026

“My Face is like a Picasso, deformed & expensive.” At least that’s what Vladislava said to Anna Uddenberg in 2024. But beneath the humor lies a simple logic of value: disfigurement is expensive.

Vladislava was born and raised in Poland close to the Ukrainian border, where 1990s post-communism was highly influential to her aesthetic. Luxury was pieced together from whatever was within reach.

In Digital Hybris, her first exhibition at the gallery, she covered the white cube in leopard print (the ultimate symbol of luxurious seduction). She then positioned herself between runway glamour and discount-store chaos. Vladislava was no longer advertising a product; she had become the product.

This exhibition, however, launches a cosmetics line: VLADISLAVA COSMETICS

And beneath the red logo, in small type and marked with a copyright sign, is its title: “Inner Beauty Is for Ugly People.”

The idea behind it is economic. The perfect face can now arrive overnight and be paid for in installments. What was once genetic is now a consumer product. And once everyone can afford it, it loses its value. Vladislava is not asking what beauty is. She is asking who profits from the fact that we are never beautiful enough.

This time, the room stays white. The campaign covers the walls, while the products sit on pedestals. The white cube and the beauty counter are basically the same anyway. Both take something ordinary, put it on a pedestal, and declare it valuable. At the center is Kauf dich schön (Buy or stay Ugly). Under a glass dome sits a set of lipstick, nail polish, compact, eyeshadow, perfume, brush, and comb. Each object is shaped like the artist. A golden Vladislava sits on the perfume bottle. A pink, glittering figure lies inside the compact. A blue figure stretches across the comb. A red figure is stuck in a lipstick. The handle of the glass dome is a nipple. The materials are resin, glass, acrylic, and 24-karat liquid gold. Each figure is hand-sanded and painted. Luxurious and simple. Cosmetics become a survival kit. With makeup, you have two faces.

As a child, Vladislava saw her grandmother’s cosmetics as holy objects. They were treasures nobody was allowed to touch. What is mass-produced for the surface today was once personal history. Both history and surface exist now in the same room. The method goes back to Sexy Gurken (Sexy pickles), where Vladislava pickled herself inside a jar. Past works like Leg mich ein (Pickle me), Iss mich (Eat me), and Friss oder stirb (Eat or be eaten) set the record straight. Kauf dich schön (Buy or stay Ugly) turns that idea around one last time. She is the commodity, but we get the bill.

Besides the makeup, Vladislava also presents products like the Ozempic stand: Two golden Ivanas, the fat one and the thin one, hold up an Ozempic pen like caryatids holding up an architectural structure. An ashtray called Marlbotox, which plays with the logic of cosmetic procedures, because smoking causes wrinkles, Botox removes them, and after enough injections, even the syringe needs somewhere to rest. Next to it, a Mettigel (Meat hedgehog) with a face, pierced with cheese skewers and blunt Botox needles. Made from tissue paper and glue on resin, sealed with acrylic and polyurethane, it becomes an image of eternal youth: immortal meat. Not for consumption. Then a hammer that grows into a plant, with Vladislava’s face on every flower. It refers to looksmaxxing, the practice of changing your appearance by hammering your bones into shape to achieve a more attractive face and a sharper jawline. Here, the tool becomes a houseplant.

On the walls hang the beauty campaign adverts: Cyber Beauty, a series of heat-sublimation prints on fabric, hung from clips. Every image shows Vladislava. Every image was made by hand in traditional Photoshop, without AI. Every distortion is a decision, not a random result. Sometimes, she has a Habsburg jaw. Sometimes, she becomes the grotesque old lady from Quentin Massys. Sometimes an ancient marble head, Marilyn Monroe through Warhol, or Michael Jackson. In Digital Hybris, Vladislava deliberately avoided art history. Now she takes its famous faces and places them over her own face. She does not quote ugliness. She wears it.

Vladislava needs no model. She transforms herself into an artificial version of stereotypical beauty.

Vladislava said: “Being an object means having no feelings. Perfection is artificial. Only a doll can be perfect.”

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