The exhibition began as a reaction to a text I wrote in the past.
A text about memory retention of art pieces in Košice, or the public space in the 70s and 80s.
It's tied to a long term interest of mine and a project I made in the East Slovak Gallery
about the art during the Socialist era.
This was supposed to be different, a reaction to contemporary art.
The text included questions, such as transposing a dialogue between the art and public space of the 70s and 80s that was a part of the character of the place.
How does it transpose through the generations, through the generation of people who were born in the circumstances,
people who lived through the political, historical and cultural context.
And also how did it influence the art of the generation past the Velvet revolution, the people who grew up in the 90s.
I addressed artists who work with history, the memory of a place.
Martin Piaček's art piece refers to the tradition of capital cities, or a random capital city Bratislava, to paraphrase the thought
of how it became a capital city.
The capital of Slovakia could've been Košice, then Martin, later they decided it would be Bratislava.
It's a metaphor for Slovakia with a sliding tooth that symbolizes the Bratislava castle.
Matej Gavula works with a terrace floor from his father's atelier garden.
The younger artists are represented by an architect and a student Maroš Juhás who created a graph named Odyssey.
It's a reminder of Kubrick's stela that's in a form of a graph made out of glass, concrete, and iron,
the three materials used to create our buildings.
It's a schematic floor plan of a city with arteries.
The stelae represent the ratio of art pieces to the number of apartments.
He is curious about the impact it had on people who moved there from north-east Slovakia.
Villagers who moved to concrete neighbourhoods of Bratislava and were surrounded by abstract sculptures.
Erik Sýkora is on the border between generations.
His video named This is not a hill that connects two artistic methods.
The first one is historic research that's amusingly synthesized.
He's curious about what happened to the place, there used to be a fountain, a sculpture from the 80s.
It all turned into a hill where kids go sledding.
The second method creates a myth about a city.
When you walk in here, you'll get surrounded by three art pieces - house storytelling.
Just like a city surrounds you when you walk through it.
A city that's full of materials, history, stories, participants of all kinds, humans, non-human, animals, surfaces.
The main part of this piece is about layering these elements.
It maps the last 60-70 years of Košice.
From the time of ceramic tiling to polystyrene tiling.
From the time of mosaics to the time of ACs and plastic flowers.