We aren't going yet, where we're going
We're going to get something done, but then let's take a look at the pine forests in Záhorie
Where I go to from time to time to calm down and find my balance.
And if we manage, we will also go towards the Danube, into the alluvial forests.
To get out of town, into the countryside for a while.
It's a place where I like to go
because it reminds me in part of Lithuania, where I was on Erasmus,
which was quite fascinating for me, with its endless pine forests.
And here is a piece of a simillar scenery.
Like children of those big trees.
I'm a graduate of painting at the University of Fine Arts in Bratislava.
I originally studied in the studio +-XXI under Professor Fischer.
It was a bachelor's degree and then the leadership changed there.
I finished my master's degree studying under an interesting young duo,
and that was Rastislav Podhorský and Martin Špirec.
In addition to visual arts, which I primarily deal with
I'm a co-founder of the platform Stojíme pri Kultúre (We Stand by the Culture)
where, along with Nina Vidovenc, Ďuri Mydlo and Stano Krajčí
we focus on cultural issues in Slovakia
and we are looking for ways how to solve them, because we think culture and art
are tools for sensitization of the society
and if something is not working in this field,
it is no wonder that it does not work elsewhere in Slovak politics.
My studio looks like this, under conditions of no space and no securities.
It's some former pantry of this apartment.
If I want to take something, I have my own ladder here
I can go high
or I just pull out what I need,
I pack it in my backpack and go work where I can.
So it's a makeshift, but I think it's pretty nice.
Its as if all my life would be about some kind of moving.
At the same time I'm joking, that with all those objects, paintings and the like,
I'm not even an artist but rather some kind of carrier,
because I'm just moving things from one place to another.
The painting just behind me is from the 3rd year at VŠVU.
This series was inspired by Ponty.
I work with a canvas with a transparent coating
so it keeps the naturalness of the material
when it’s a picture.
The scenes are mostly figural, as you can see.
Here is my storage.
This is how paintings are stored under makeshift conditions.
These two, and the paintings in the kitchen,
are from the series "High".
I'm not sure it will be visible through the plastic.
This is a painting that was about a search for some kind of ideal.
It's a enlarged portrait, which consists of 21 portraits,
of women around me, who have benefited me.
This painting is also one of the older ones, and it's a representation of a Platonic cave.
In my series I often work so, that stuff that doesn't fit into one format
can be told by the next one in the series. They complement each other as if there was
some kind of communication between pictures like in a comic book or the like
The storytelling aspect of the individual pieces within the series creates the whole story.
We're on Hlavná Street, in front of Výklad Gallery in Trnava,
where my diploma Certainty and Suicide is currently reinstalled and exhibited again
It's gently ironic, it's a parable about the skepticism of contemporary man,
of an post-postmodern, post-digital age,
where we feel some kine separation in some ind of overload
either related to informations, or to our thoughts.
It consists of several works,
behind me is a work called Fight and Love, it's like a banner,
which is associated with some revolutionary situations,
currently happening in the world.
It refers to Erich Fromm and his theories
about love and belonging.
At the same time, it's about how people mix, collaborate,
or create a certain tension and struggle among themselves.
Under the banner in both shopping windows, are fragments from a piece called Variable Options
which was a 25-meter painting in the printing factory Svornosť.
And it was about the many ways, how one can deal with the world.
It's like a sort of escape, as it speaks about potential suicides,
it is kind of exaggerated, it's terribly colorful, nice and decorative,
but it contains some tragic event,
a kind of warning,
It is a leap into the abyss, or a poisonous herb,
hitting the wall and the like.
It's art, that has been taken out of its static origins
and is exposed here in a new version.
Next to it, one can see a piece called Echo. It is about the individual, his mental strain,
and his effort to find a kind of calm nature
when we find that quiet place,
where we can come and cry out into that rock, which is there firm and forever,
and pass that emotion, your own more-than-living,
hand it over into that space.
They're already pre-dried, but that doesn't matter.
And here's another one. Well, we'll pick some mushrooms today!
I do performance, in a more professional way,
since I started working with the collective
Marina Abramovič po sebe neupratuje.
It's a collective that was founded at the Academy of Fine Arts.
There I learned to talk about my things before they're done,
which is something I lacked, given my individualistic context as a painter
and there it kind of opened up.
I had some former experience with a kind of performativity.
I do shoot movement on video, capturing different positions,
which can or cannot happen.
Then I watch them, and work with what remains in my head
as if it were some memory traces.
I think about the enviroment of painting, from the point of view that it’s an experience,
that pulls a person out of the ordinary reality,
and secondly, when one gets out of the studio,
one is confronted with the world,
whether it's different festivals, or symposia, worshops,
where one gets in touch with art, or it's not a typical gallery space,
and you have to calculate your every step there is no time for mistakes.
And if it’s such a painting,
in such huge areas, as I did,
it's actually a whole body painting, it's basically translation, movement, dance.
That's what I enjoy.
Not being fixed on the rectangular frame,
but to find other options how to do that painting.
I call it home stage design, maybe some theatricality,
it is also one of the motives
which I used in my work.
For example, recently I had an exhibition in T3 - Kultúrny prostriedok,
which is a discarded tram car at Trnavské mýto
where I worked with LEDs and lighting on the ceiling of the wagon.
It created a kind of specific atmosphere.
I was thinking about today's haste
and acceleration, mental health,
and the need to slow down and begin to perceive again.
As if the light were for me a kind of stimulus
because at the same time it can be something unsettling
but it also evokes the lights of the city at night,
and it also creates an environment
which is totally different from the everyday reality.
One can get dive into that atmosphere, to experience it,
to perceive the world around you a little differently.
I have a theory. Basically nature was here millions of years
before us, and it will remain
perhaps decades, millennia
let's see how much we'll destroy it or not.
And thus, it passses a certain agelessness, to the portrayed motives.
I'm not a big fan of art, that depicts time.
I want it to be relevant, both yesterday and today and tomorrow.
Maybe that's why I start from archetypes, that seem to be common and eternal for humanity.
They seem to be perpetually transmitted in the collective subconscious.
So yes, nature, although I often portray it denatured,
is an important part of those works.
I come from a fishing family and I spent a lot of time by the water.
It has an purifying effect.
Symbolically I would link it with baptism, or rebirth, a change
the aquatic environment, is where everything started to emerge,
like life, the evolution of species.
Here a forest needs to be planted again.
But that's great, creation, demise, rebirth.
It's the cycle, which is natural.
I wanted to show you something slightly visually different
but it's still fine that they took care of it.
It's like a piece of art, how nature is transforming, forming.
Maybe it stands still for a moment, then it can start again.
Actually, it's all fine.
This is really nice to see,
what I understand as expanded painting, as it somehow appears,
here, where the young, planted trees are indicated in the nursery
Suddenly, when you look around, it's regular, irregular, over the entire area.
If one would look down from a drone, he would see the image,
and that's something like a painting emerging in the landscape.
Just how I consider some atmospheric phenomena, like darkfall or dawn, to be paintings.
Maybe it sounds kitschy and pathetic, but it doesn't bother me at all.
Because it's a painting that comes out of nowhere,
which can many time hit me a lot, Lo! this is how it is, this is how ir really is.
This is a lunar landscape ..