Opening: 20. 10. 2022 at 6 pm
Exhibition duration: 21. 10. 2022 - 26. 3. 2023 (extended)
Curator: Mira Sikorová-Putišová
Exhibition space Q, Hlavná 27, Košice
A slowly and gradually composed story that talks about art since the year 1989. Sixteen works from the Intermedia and Media Art Collection from the period 1993 – 2017 form a special part of the collection of the Museum of Art Žilina. Each artwork is presented in such a way as to provide the viewer not only with instructions on how to read it, but also information about its context in the work of the artist as well as recent art history.
The Intermedia and Media Art Collection remains a relatively new collection serving as an archive of post-1989 art – that is art of the last thirty years. A similar collection can probably be found in almost every gallery, but very few galleries developed a collection of 1990s art at a time when it was "alive" and curatorially "untouched", while also considered significant and worthy of display as a collection object. This decision is the logical outcome of the gallery's focus on contemporary art (object, installation, and their fusion with video) and the rare synergy in the collaborations between artists and the gallery – in the organization of exhibitions, publications, and, above all, in the purchase of works or their acquisition by donation.
The birth of the Collection of Intermedia and Media Art of the Museum of Art Žilina was strongly influenced by the preferences of its directors Alex Mlynárčík, Katarína Rusnáková, and curator Radislav Matuštík. Also when looking back today – the first installation became part of the collection in 1992, and the first video installation a year later – the decision to create this collection was an exceptional step. During the relatively short period between 1992 and 1997 (the pivotal stage), the gallery was able to build up a remarkably large collection of intermedia and media art from the 1990s. Since the beginning of the noughties (and especially after the establishment of grant schemes of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Arts Council), it has been supplemented with the works of artists who shaped the form of Slovak art of the following decades.
The sixteen works presented at the exhibition in Košice certainly do not aspire to reflect the whole story of intermedia and media art after 1989. Together with some other collections of the Museum of Art Žilina, they illustrate the "dreaming of a museum", which – prosaically speaking – is nothing more than curatorial work in an art collecting institution. This art collection primarily emphasizes the fact that building a fine art collection in a gallery is always a set of decisions that are made at a particular time and in a particular context. In addition, numerous factors converge here, while many of them can be formatted and influenced, but others are less so or not at all. To put the activity in metaphorical terms: it is the creation of an imaginary map of space-time, plotted from basic fixed features towards more detailed features so that it would be as faithful as possible. It also reflects the reality where, on the one hand, there is a vision – a dream of wholeness and, since it is a continuous activity, a permanent dream of how to get closer to this ideal, and on the other hand a set of challenges and achievements influencing the fulfillment of this dream.
Artists: Juraj Bartusz, Pavlína Fichta Čierna, Anton Čierny, Eva Filová, Roman Galovský, Jana Kapelová, Daniela Krajčová, Jaroslav Kyša, Igor Peter Meluzin, Ilona Németh, Boris Ondreička, Tomáš Rafa, Peter Rónai, Laco Teren, Jana Želibská
