Born 1994 in Riga, Latvia
Lives and works in Heilbronn, Germany
2017-21 Studium der Freien Bildenden Kunst (Diplom), FKAM, Mannheim
Evelina Klanikova’s work explores movement as a force that shapes perception, generates patterns, and transforms recognizable forms. Working primarily in oil, she investigates how energy, rhythm, speed, and repetition can remain perceptible within a static image. Across three interconnected series, movement is not simply represented as action; it becomes a structural principle, organizing the composition and directing the viewer’s eye through fields of visual complexity.
In Flight, birds and the patterns produced by their movement through space form the primary subject. Rather than treating the bird as a fixed motif or symbolic figure, Klanikova focuses on the body, wings, and trajectory as carriers of direction, rhythm, and change. Repeated marks and fragmented forms evoke wingbeats, acceleration, gathering, and dispersal. At times, a bird is immediately recognizable; elsewhere, it emerges gradually from a dense network of gestures. This tension between abstraction and recognition is central to the series, particularly the moment in which apparent disorder begins to reveal an underlying structure.
Organic Chemistry extends this investigation through abstract formations that appear to grow, connect, divide, and react. Although the compositions evoke biological and chemical processes, they do not illustrate specific scientific phenomena. Instead, forms accumulate and transform into systems that feel simultaneously controlled and unstable.
In some works, these formations exist independently; in others, they occupy human silhouettes. The recognizable outline of the body contains an active internal field, suggesting movement, memory, energy, and transformation beneath the surface. The figure is therefore not presented as a fixed or unified presence, but as a temporary structure composed of shifting relationships. Here, movement becomes a continuous process through which bodies, forms, and internal systems reorganize themselves.
Racing Standstill turns toward the contemporary city. Informed by Paul Virilio’s writings on speed, urban space, and modernity, the series examines the visual intensity of traffic, artificial light, architecture, noise, and constant motion. The paintings explore the paradox of rapid movement coupled with a sense of psychological or physical suspension.
Layers of light and fragmented urban forms create an atmosphere of acceleration, yet the painted image arrests that movement and holds it in prolonged stillness. The city becomes a space in which speed and immobility coexist, and where the experience of movement is inseparable from interruption, repetition, and pause.
The act of looking is itself part of this process. The viewer’s eye moves between fragments, searches for relationships, and gradually constructs an image from elements that may initially appear unstable or disconnected. Recognition is neither immediate nor fixed; it develops through sustained attention and shifts according to distance and perspective.
Oil paint is central to Klanikova’s practice because of its capacity for layering, revision, concealment, and revelation. Earlier decisions remain embedded within the surface, allowing the painting to retain traces of its own development. This accumulation introduces a temporal dimension to the work. The slow process of painting stands in deliberate contrast to the fleeting movements being represented, giving transient actions and unstable forms a lasting material presence.
Ultimately, Evelina Klanikova’s work asks how movement can become visible as structure. She is concerned with the point at which fragmented elements begin to form a rhythm, a silhouette, or a system, and with the possibility that energy may continue to resonate long after physical motion has ceased.
Group exhibitions
2026 Verborgene Horizonte, Kunstgalerie Kuns(t)räume Grenzenlos, Bayerisch Eisenstein
2022 Kunstmesse, Frauenmuseum Bonn, Katalog
2022 Perron Kunstpreis in der Sparte Malerei, Kunsthaus Frankenthal
2022 Neue AnSichten, Raum S4, Mannheim, Katalog
2021 Strümpfe The Supper-Artclub, Mannheim
2021 Sommerausstellung der Studenten, FKAM Mannheim
2021 Ping Pong 15 Dialoge, Kunstverein Viernheim, Katalog
2021 Astratto o Informale?, Galleria ARTtime, Udine, Italien
2020 Coronale, Mannheimer Kunstverein
2020 Kunst vor der Tür - Student*innen der Freien Kunstakademie Mannheim (FKAM) bringen in der Zeit von Covid-19 ihre Werke nach draußen
2019 Das geschriebene Bild, vhs Singen
2019 70 Jahre Grundgesetz, Bildungszentrum der Bundeswehr (BIZ), Mannheim, Katalog