We're at Kunsthalle Bratislava at the exhibition of artists nominated for the Oskár Čepan Awards 2021.
The exhibition is a collection of five projects, which's variety relates to the nature of the Oskár Čepan Awards project.
The project is based on an open call, and any artist can register for the awards.
The selection of artists is the result of a consensus of a professional and international judging committee.
They select four participants each year, but they selected five this year.
The variety in artist projects is completely natural but the exhibition has its curators.
This year's curators were Jen Kratochvil, who is not present at this time, and myself.
If we were to talk about how we approached curating the exhibition,
it's a process based on intense communication with individual artists picked by the committee.
We intensively communicated with the artists whose artworks are present here during a half-year period.
They are Luki Essender, Èv van Hettmer, Tamara Kametani, Ondřej Houšťava, Viktorie Langer.
The connection between the various artist attitudes and styles wasn't really that difficult to find.
Almost all art you can see here are new projects, meaning they were created specifically for the exhibition.
However, some artists worked on these projects long before the exhibition and presented them here for the first time.
The artists will continue working on the project after the awards,
so this can be considered as the first stage of presentation with the idea they will continue with the work.
To characterize the theme of the exhibition since the artists worked on the projects for the past year and
they're connected to the last two-year period, there is a certain pandemic narrative in everything installed over here.
It's not connected directly with the pandemic but there's a certain dimension of crisis that the artists reflect on.
Everyone reflects on the crisis in their way and their artistic program.
The idea that connects the artworks is a search or an offer for ways out of the crisis.
They do this in various ways, that's why the exhibition got the name All in - Release the possibility
We take the plurality of views and opinions into consideration, the all in part as a reference to a collective exhibition.
We also take into account presenting the option of a better world to the audience and how to live in it differently.