Július Koller. Futurological Cultural Situation

Miesto / Location: PMG, exteriér mesta Piešťany

Trvanie / Duration: 17. 9. – 6. 11. 2021 / September 17, 2021 – November 6, 2021

Otvorenie / Opening: 16. 9. o 18.00 hod. / September 16, 2021 at 6:00 p.m.

Kurátor výstavy / Curator of the exhibition: Daniel Grúň

Produkcia výstavy / Production of the exhibition: Zlata Borůvková,

Grafický dizajn a vizuálna komunikácia / Graphic design and visual communication: Ľubica Segečová,

Priestorové riešenie výstavy / Spacial design of the exhibition: Matej Gavula,

Spolupráca za MsKS Piešťany / Collaboration from MsKS Piešťany: Linda Blahová, Martin Sedlák.

Garantom výstavy je o. z. The Július Koller Society.

We each cope in some way with the circumstances of our own origin. Our birthplace is often the mysterious place that hides untold mysteries. It concentrates the sources of childhood memories, and thus becomes a kind of lifelong refuge not only in times of personal crisis. Július Koller (1939–2007) as a conceptual artist identified himself with U.F.O.-naut J.K., so his origin was not entirely terrestrial, but also extraterrestrial and cosmic. He spent the first years of his life in Piešťany with his parents, who worked in the spas. When he entered the art scene in the mid-1960s, he began to use unconventional techniques to differentiate his work from artistic formalism and all kinds of aestheticism. Instead of the established art movements, he directed his own thoughts towards the personal creation of a new reality during everyday life, focusing on living creativity and a new cosmohumanistic culture. Koller realized his artistic acts mainly as plays, interventions, and gave them the name “cultural situations”. Therefore, the references to his birthplace in his works have the form of performative and photographic inputs to various environments. The exhibition will present a selection of works that are specifically connected to the town of Piešťany and its surrounding areas. In June 1970, when he participated in the legendary openair exhibition Polyartistic space. Statue, object, light, music in Piešťany, he realized his participation as a play area with a reference to his birth house (Kursalón building) in the city park. At each stop, the visitors were supposed to concentrate on observing unidentifiable flying objects (U.F.O.). In the 1980s, Július Koller repeatedly visited Piešťany, because as a lecturer he participated in symposia of amateur artists in nearby Moravany nad Váhom. In 1988, several important performances were created in a photographic record, realized in collaboration with Květoslava Fulierová. Their common feature is the physical interaction with selected realities, specifically with buildings as places of cultural, social, but also personal significance. When working with photography, Koller uses himself as a performer to mark the space with a figural sign of the body and also with a specific U.F.O. code, which is part of his personal linguistic system: Conceptual Cultural Situation (U.F.O.),
Futurological Cultural Situation (U.F.O.), Fateful Cultural Situation 1 (U.F.O.), Fateful Cultural Situation 2 (U.F.O.), Cult Cultural Situation (U.F.O.). The connection of cultural situations to the myth of origin, of lost civilizations and disappeared objects opens the ordinary world to the influence of unknown factors coming from space and helps us to grasp its mysterious and unknown dimension. The exhibition is composed as a play area in collaboration with intermedia sculptor Matej Gavula. Part of this environment is the graphic cycle of Svätopluk Mikyta, in which he freely follows the haptic game with paints and waste materials, where their recycling and reuse has an important place. Another guest is musical aesthetician and composer of experimental music Július Fujak, who realizes a sonic-musical performance for the exhibition.
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Květoslava Fulierová, the author of the photographs. The event is supported using public funding of Slovak Arts Coun

Exhibition Opening