Kassaboys created series of uniforms and military ranks intended for artists, indicating their position within the art scene. Ranks depend on the number of exhibitions and prestige of the gallery where these artists exhibited. This ranks visibly sort them out into categories of importance. Uniforms are first of all suitable for exhibition openings but also for everyday use. They help viewers to orient themselves in the complicated hierarchy of figures of the art world. Dividing the artists into equal and more equal is beneficial also for the art scene itself. „We will avoid the tiring discussions about who, where and with whom was exhibiting,“ say Kassaboys.
The system of ranks and uniforms is based on charts of the Slovak Ministry of Education (CREUČ), sorting out various art activities into clear categories. Art uniforms are on one hand a parody for ranking art according to a hierarchical scale, and on the other hand suggest that art has the same importance as the army or police. The contemporary visual art in Slovakia is perceived as unimportant and this fact is also reflected by the state politics and the lack of interest of the general public. As an old saying tells us: „Clothes make the man“. Besides of their creativity, do artists need uniforms to be visible? Kunstuniformen try to emphasize the importance of art in the society.
The project Kunstuniformen was inspired by the environment of Kulturpark in Košice that used to serve as military barracks and where Kassaboys have their studio in the present moment.
Art group Kassaboys consists of Košice artists Radovan Čerevka (*1980), Tomáš Makara (*1982), a Peter Vrábeľ (*1982). The group was established in 2006 in Košice and made several group shows: „We work with terms like local patriotism and centralism, democracy and nationalism or the legendary archetype of the artist from an art periphery “. The biggest attention attracted the project Museum (2010) commenting on anti-Hungarian statements of the Slovak politician Jan Slota. These statements were materialized into curious and funny museum artifacts by the art group.
Lenka Kukurová, curator and art historian, studied art history at FF UK in Bratislava. At the present she researches contemporary political art at Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague.
