The works of Tomáš Džadoň, Marianne Lang, Monogramista T.D and Pavla Sceranková are linked by an interest in dwellings, private spaces and everyday situations connected to living, settling or moving. The architecture of living, dispositional solutions within our own four walls, objects and social interactions in space considered to be private raise questions of personal but also cultural identity, generational point of view, memory and interpersonal relations.
In his work from 2011, Tamed apartment block, Tomáš Džadoň made a model of a family house out of the flat of his parents. By the use of the architecture of socialist living, which is familiar to him – he calls the apartment block his “natal house” – Džadoň addresses the way in which it is possible to deal with the past and define it's values in the present. He considers the effect of residential architecture as an intimate and private space as extremely important in the life of every human.
The Austrian artist Marianne Lang consistently devotes her work to the phenomenon of space and architecture, and explores their psychological dimension. In video installation Rainy Days (2010) she portrays a room in her parents' house. The static camera records an empty space, only the light conditions change, night after day. The picture of reality gradually changes into fiction, until we find out that the room is not real, but it is a model of a room made of cardboard by Lang. The idea of a home as a real space becomes an illusion.
In his series of pictures Moving and Emergency Exits (2000-2007), Monogramista T.D decided to “portray” his friends-artists, theorists and collectors by floor plans of their homes with his own textual and painted interventions. He processed the geometrical scheme of the inhabited space in the spirit of modernist abstract painters like Piet Mondrian or Lajos Kassák. He playfully referrs to not only the everyday existence of a man caught in the net of his own four walls, but also the relationship of modernism and postmodernism. Art theorist Daniel Grúň declared: ”If we understand history of art as an open archive, where the traces of cultural memory are being stored, then these compositions constitute metaphorically and literally realized escapes and movements in the archive of history of art...” (Grúň in: Nie som autor, som metafora [I'm Not an Author, I am a Metaphor], 2011 p. 338)
Work with memory and visualisation of a recollection in time and space is the motive of more works by Pavla Sceranková. In the series of photographs Bunker (2006) she records a memory performance about an armchair in her parents' living room. By using a cardboard maquette resembling an abstracted shape of a couch she reconstructs living room games from childhood. The cardboard object evokes a sculptural model as a primary but not definitive sketch of a shape, strengthening the idea of a constantly changing memory, it's model-like quality in real time and space. Sceranková hid inside the object resembling a house during the performance. The memory of childhood became a new reality for her, in which she metaphorically ”dwells”. In her video Hideaway (2006), in a bizarre scene of wrapping herself in a large paper bag, the author realises another performance, in which she reflects a relationship as a safe shelter that on one hand protects a person, and on the other can be a barrier in a free movement.
Text by Gabriela Kisová
Authors:
Tomáš Džadoň (*1981 in Poprad), graduate of AVU in Prague, winner of the Essl Award CEE 2007, in 2009 he became the holder of Cyprián Majerník Prize, finalist of the Oskár Čepán and Jindřich Chalupecký Prize. Since 2008 he is a PhD student of “Neateliér” [“Non-Studio”] (Prof. Dezider Tóth). His work is dedicated to sculpture, installation drawing and prints. He lives and works in Prague.
Marianne Lang (*1979 in Graz, AT), graduate of the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg (studio of painting and new media), in 2008 she was awarded the Euregio-Kunstpreis, she took in residences in Berlin, Paris, Virginia and Budapest. She works in th emedia of drawing, object, video and installation. She lives and works in Vienna.
Monogramista T.D (Prof. Dezider Tóth, akad. mal.) was born in 1947 in Výčapy-Opatovce. Since 1970's he belongs to the most important representatives of Slovak art. His conceptual work extends to action art, installations, original books to painting, object and minimalist interventions. Since 1991 he teaches at the AFAD in Bratislava. In 2009 he was awarded the Prize of Tatra Banka Foundation for art. He lives and works in Bratislava and Brno.
Pavla Sceranková (*1980 in Košice), graduate of the AVU in Prague, stipendiary of the DAAD at the UDK in Berlin (Prof. Tony Cragg), laureate of the Cyprián Majerník Prize, finalist of the Jindřich Chalupecký and Oskár Čepan Prize. Apart from sculpture she is dedicated to installation, photography and video. She lives and works in Prague.
Special event:
February 15 2012, 18.00-19.00, guided tour of the exhibition, free entrance.
Contact:
office@krokusgaleria.sk
