Carrot and Stick (2020), porcelain-supplemental, 30 cm.

Petra Combarro (b. 1993)
To Hungarian sculptor Petra Combarro, the fragment is far from a dead end: exploring largely undiscovered artistic paths in her practice, the artist tells unconventional stories by reworking old, cast-off artworks. A regular customer at Budapest’s downtown antique shops, Combarro is constantly on the lookout for chipped, broken or otherwise damaged porcelain figurines, which she then incorporates into her own practice by dissecting and rebuilding them in the most surprising ways. Often playfully blurring the line between human and non-human, Combarro creates grotesque and satirical characters by swapping the heads and changing up the limbs of figurines. Purposefully exaggerating kitsch, the artist not only communicates surreal and humorous narratives through her small-scale porcelain sculptures, but also prompts the viewer reconsider the notions of new and second-hand.