Vienna, April 4 – June 18 (Moulene) – June 25 (Barba + Faruqee), https://www.secession.at/ It has been five years since my last visit to the Secession. I had some memories and some preconceptions about this space. The art there was not easy. It was very conceptual. And the curators/director seemed to have a liking for…
March 23 – April 21, http://nod.roxy.cz/en/ At first sight, I encountered strict black and white abstract shapes on canvas and smaller, almost monochrome paintings with line patterns of applied paint. The whole space was permeated by a steady ambient-style music reminiscent of a science fiction movie soundtrack.
Prague, March 16 – April 20, 2017, http://www.dscgallery.com The large scale interior architecture-like installations from glass and stainless steel appeared to me most of all as a celebration of the capitalist-realism architecture of office towers and business districts. The scale was monumental, larger-than-human. The surfaces were smooth, reflective. Some transparent and some opaque, all set…
Vienna, April 22, 2017, http://www.graetzlgalerie.at/ An evening with two sound performances. The space appeared as multifunctional and probably doubles as an office or exhibition room during non-performance times. The atmosphere was friendly and warm. Audience and the performers all shared the same space side by side.
Bratislava, March 15 – May 13, 2017, http://gandy-gallery.com The exhibition presented “artists who critically examine the world in which they were born” (the press release said). There was a mixture of Czech and Slovak artists from various generations.
Bratislava, April 2017, http://www.danubiana.sk/en Danubiana is a huge private museum located at the outskirts of Bratislava on an island in the middle of the river Danube. Gerard Meulensteen, the owner of the museum is the founder of Neways Electronics International, a global electronic manufacturing services provider from the Netherlands with subsidiaries in Germany, East-Europe and…
Bratislava, April 4 – 16, 2017, http://www.svu.sk The Umelka Gallery is managed by the Slovak Union of Visual Artists (SVU). The building was purpose-built in the 1920s for the union, and it is a beautiful classic exhibition space, with roof windows spreading even light through the space. The two rooms of the gallery contained two…
Bratislava, March 24 – June 4, 2017, http://www.sng.sk Simply speaking, Milan Adamciak is the Slovak John Cage. This was the main message the exhibition conveyed. The retrospective exhibition exhaustively covered the creations of Adamciak from 1964 to 2017. The majority of works was in the form of notations, sketches and visual poems on paper. There…
Bratislava, November 2, 2016 – May 21, 2017, http://www.sng.sk The space was dark, the exhibition design was fresh and contemporary. The combination of gothic to baroque religious paintings and sculptures with Zelinka’s dead animal sculptures was special. It made Zelinka steal the show. The contemplative approach to looking at religious paintings was somehow disturbed by…
Prague, March 2 – April 7, 2017, https://www.galeriespz.com/ A little one-room gallery, which probably used to be a garage. The peculiar thing was that there seems to be no opening hours (or at least they were not listed). You can only peek through rather small window panes of a large grey four-segment door. The show…