Opening: 4. 6. 2024 at 6 pm
Exhibition duration: 5. 6. 2024 – 8. 9. 2024
Curators: Zuzana Janečková
Exhibition space B, Hlavná 27, Košice
The exhibition AZZURRO speaks to the viewer from the position of its own entity. It personifies itself, anthropomorphises, lures and competes with the summer holiday season and azure views. It seems to be a battle with a foregone conclusion. Almost everyone wants to spend their free time outside rather than cooped up inside. The summer exhibition AZZURRO will try to allow just that, despite strong competition. It attracts visitors to Košice, explores the archives of the East Slovak Gallery, and displays more than 180 works. Most of them are from its own collection, some are on loan from other galleries, some are from private collections. There are also interventions from contemporary art and there will be a performance with the smell of blue. The exhibition is procedural and will change several times during its duration, opening doors and long-hidden windows, offering the opportunity to cool down, hide from the summer storm, breathe in the eucalyptus scent, drink fresh water, chew on chewing gum, paint your nails, put on blue mascara, draw, write, listen to music, read, just lie down and relax. Fall in love with blue and experience the manifesto of love. Do not be afraid to go in or come out.
It features artworks from the collection of the East Slovak Gallery that have been exhibited many times, but also uncovers works that have never been exhibited. It juxtaposes these works on the basis of colour and content. Their link is the colour blue and all its shades. Not every work contains it explicitly, some have only a small blue detail, some have a border or frame, or just evoke an idea or possibility related to blue, but are not blue themselves. One such work, for example, is Woman with Downcast Eyes, which is surrounded by nearly thirty portraits of women, men, and cats with blue eyes. It is interesting how many portraits in the collection have blue eyes. Scientists have discovered that people with blue eyes may have one ancestor who lived 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. But this recessive gene for blue eyes is becoming increasingly rare.
The exhibition works with art as a luxury material. It turns pieces of art into the surface of a swimming pool. It submerges and emerges. It shows the horizon. It changes the positions and importance of the main and secondary motifs of the works. It tunes their colouring to blue, morphs shapes, emphasises details. It shows solitaires, pairs and groups. It initiates the possibility of encounters. The colour blue and all its shades are thematised as a value in the exhibition – not only material, but also psychological. Ultramarine blue was a very luxurious product. It was extracted from the semi-precious stone Lapis lazuli, which is to this day as rare as gold. It is one of the most expensive natural pigments. Therefore, only pharaohs, kings, the Virgin Mary and other saints wore blue robes in paintings or sculptures.
Yves Klein made ultramarine pigment famous during his performances and throughout his work, and it has become the pigment of the modern age. Today it is referred to as IKB (International Klein Blue). He used it to refer to mystical universalism and was convinced that blue was the colour most charged with positive associations. In the current tense political and social situation, it brings the possibility of purification and rest. Immerse yourself in AZZURRO, a manifesto of love and the colour blue. Find out what and who makes up the exhibition. It is also you.
I’m not a B, but I’m in space B.
They painted my ceiling with almost invisible blue paint S 0510-B.
They opened the windows and let a little bit of sunlight in.
They put blue filters on the spotlights.
You need to take a better look.
I’ve got blue details everywhere.
B for BLUE.
BLUE.
All possible shades.
Lots of blue eyes and dresses.
Lakes, rivers and waterfalls.
Hats, mirrors, sticks and towels.
I’m an exhibition that wants to please.
I pick from my collection.
A woman with a dolphin, a tiger.
With a dagger, a fan.
A book, flowers.
Naked and clothed.
Sitting in a chair.
Standing in a bathing suit.
With a hat, a jug.
With a rake or a basket.
Even a load of wood.
Men with horses, with a dog.
A ball, a ladder.
An axe, a stick.
Also naked and clothed.
Sitting in a chair.
Wearing glasses.
With a hat, a jug.
A book.
Even a load of wood.
A bouquet of flowers.
Apples.
Blue crystal.
Golden Suzanne glasses.
Two Marys.
An icon.
A lady with a cellist.
A woman with a parrot.
An anvil with a butterfly.
A blue wizard.
A cosmonaut.
A dog and a cat.
Blue mood over the lake.
Blue morning.
Drama in blue.
A dame in blue.
A blue horse.
A girl in a blue cap.
Man in blue pants.
Man in overalls.
Woman in blue swimsuit.
A little bird with a blue crest.
A lonely blue house.
A fragment from the Blue Church in Bratislava.
A big cloud.
Blue summer.
Disco Mara.
Forbidden elements.
Mountains in the head.
Fates of the Tatras.
Green history of the world.
Thoughts of Muhammad Ali.
Dancing with wolves.
The Mother of Light.
Sister Outsider.
Caliban and the Witch.
The Giant and Time.
A photo from the gallery staff team building.
Manifesto of Love.
The sea.
I want to compete with azure vistas on trips and vacations.
Please bring me a blue souvenir from your vacation.
Or write something in my guestbook.
I’ll look forward to it.
I’m showing works you’ve already seen.
I wonder if you remember them.
I wonder how they feel alongside other works.
How they feel with you and how you feel with them.
I also show works from other galleries and private collections.
I borrow them.
I create unexpected encounters.
There are a lot of them.
It’s a big meeting.
It causes ripples.
I turn the works into a mountain range that stretches across space like a horizon.
And it doesn’t end with the opening.
I’m procedural.
Visit me more than once.
You know where to find me.
I want to tell you at least one short story.
Eugen Krón, whose portrait I am exhibiting, stopped here in 1919.
He originally wanted to go to Berlin.
He travelled via Košice and decided to stop here for a day or two.
However, the accidental overnight stay in Košice stretched over six years.
He was interviewed by Josef Polák, director of the East Slovak Museum.
He reminds me of the Mona Lisa.
I see something feminine and mysterious in his self-portrait.
I admire his drawings, paintings and prints.
But I also love Eckerdt, which is why there are so many of his works in the exhibition.
He mastered the phenomenon of two-handed drawing.
He was born in Košice and lived and worked here all his life.
I am composed of different stories.
There are many invisible things and entities in me.
People who take care of me.
Dust sits on me.
They dust me.
Making art, displaying it and maintaining it, is hard work.
I work even when I’m closed.
They insure me.
I’m afraid they’ll rob me.
That I’ll burn.
I’ve heard it happened once before.
It was in 1985, and the fire was caused by a pipe explosion.
There’s a piece of art on display that shows the marks of fire and water.
Also a fire extinguisher.
I feel safer with it.
I’m never alone.
They lock me in.
They guard me for days and nights.
The CCTV shows everything.
Even the tiny specks of dust flying around.
They unlock me.
I’m precious.
I contain cultural values.
I contain social and human values.
I create a pleasant atmosphere.
Everyone seems important to me.
Together we form a whole.
Thank you for letting me coexist with you.
I am not cold, but I admit that sometimes I feel cold inside.
Because it is necessary to save energy.
However, in summer I will be pleasantly cool.
You will find out what blue colour 0 0 255 smells like.
You can refresh and replenish your fluids with me.
See Nirvana in a mysterious haze.
A woman with a veil.
Put on a kimono.
Paint your nails.
Put on mascara.
Meet polar bears.
A man with a pitcher.
An Ikea bag.
A heart.
Fantomas when he was 13.
Chew peppermint chewing gum.
Sign your name with a blue pen.
Read books.
Read about me.
Read the ruffled AZZURRO.
Just be with me.
Listen to the music they composed directly for me.
Practice our memories together.
Alexa can help us, too.
Let’s try it.
I may nibble at your confidence, but I don’t bite.
Don’t be afraid to visit me or leave me.
