opening: 17. 6. 2020, 6 p.m.
duration: 18. 6. – 30. 8. 2020
East Slovak Gallery, Alžbetina 22
The exhibition of a trio of independent, established artists of the younger generation, Michal Machciník, Erik Sikora and Boris Sirka, captures the current form of their authorial work. At the same time, it is a review of dissertations, completing doctoral studies of the very first doctoral students / graduates of doctoral studies at the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University, Department of Fine Arts and Intermedia.
Michal Machciník's project is the result of artistic research focused on space in understanding its philosophical and aesthetic categories. The distinguishing feature of Machciník's work is thorough material and theoretical preparation both in the field, resp. in the country being researched as well as in the studio space. During his studies, he completed an internship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the sculpture studio of Jindřich Zeithamml (2012), in 2015 he was a semifinalist of the Start point prize - an award for graduates of European art schools. The author was represented by Machciník on the successful curatorial project "Into the Wilderness", which was realized in the Slovak National Gallery at the turn of 2019/2020.
Erik Sikora tests the authenticity of his own product - an artist who wants to be poetic as an unsuccessful startupist, wants to be motivating as a guru at a TEDX lecture, wants to be honest like a youtuber, wants to spread the speed of a pop song chorus, wants to use authentic Košice expressions. As an exemplary doctoral student at the Technical University, he is trying to develop a special spray that can provide the subject with an Internet coating, and thus finally connect and reconcile the online and offline world in all creative industries. Erik Sikora won the 2019 Oskár Čepan Award.
Boris Sirka is best known for his paintings, but his ideological intention lies in the constant discovery of new forms. His project entitled Rediscovering and Redefining the Painting resulted in objects that materialize scenes from his last painting series presented in a separate exhibition From Pleasure to Anxiety and Back in the exhibition spaces of the East Slovak Gallery in Košice. However, the resulting works are not just an illustration of his paintings, but he found a completely new morphology and thus redefined his work with a fundamental step from a flat medium to a spatial one.
