Exhibition / I WAS KEEPING IT ALL SAFE FOR YOU

Report from the exhibition of Jaro Kyša and his guest Radovan Čerevka in ZAHORIAN & VAN ESPEN Bratislava

Dead skin subject to gravity; fossil armament of a soldier as a remnant of war conflict; abandoned bee combs without their companies and infected by a pest; ‘condensation’ of automobile waste artificially created stalactites that have grown under highway bridges. In the space of the Zahorian & Van Espen gallery, all of this is immersed in an unusual atmosphere that is strange to us at first sight, but at the same time, it presents something very familiar to us. The presence of man as a geomorphologic actor is palpable here and yet we cannot point at it. It is hidden behind all this evidence of the past. Behind objects whose inner qualities retain traces of advanced time. In general, the state of decomposition, composition and growth of fossils and sediments is a memory: the memory whereby geologists and palaeontologists reconstruct the time before the emergence of mankind when the expansionism of our thinking was not even in the seeds. As a result of these material records of the past, science can deduce exact images of ancient times with their geological changes and ecosystems. The time of this history without man seems somewhat different to us today, its slowness is radically distant, beyond our imagination. Although the presented environment of Jaroslav Kyša (1981) with an untitled work (detection field) (2018) by Radovan Čerevka (1980) evokes the past, his passage of time is different. Standing in this space, we suspect on the layers of stalactites or falling skin from the ceiling a strange pace of duration, which, however, occurs after exhaustion – is actually a slowdown. The space of the Zahorian & Van Espen Gallery has thus become a deposit of the past, which is anchored in the future. It is the archaeology of tomorrow’s vision in which we can more intensively observe the impact of man.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Photo: Marko Horban.

Jaroslav Kyša (1981) belongs to the young generation of artists. He graduated from the Studio of Free Creativity 3D of prof. JurajBartusz at the Department of Fine Arts and Intermedia of the Technical University of Košice. He has participated in several residences (Halle 14, Leipzig, Germany; Brooklyn Langer residency, New York, USA; Keret House, Warsaw, Poland). Already during his early artisticcareer he won the German Szpilman Award (2009). He was a finalist of the Oscar Čepan Award (2004, 2014). In 2017 he received the Novum Foundation Award. The sculptural, intermedial and performative works of Jaroslav Kyša were a part of important exhibition projects with domestic as well as international significance: Is it here again? Slovak state in contemporary art, curators: Katarína Bajcurová, Petra Hanáková, Bohunka Koklesová, Nina Vrbanová, 2016 – 2017, Kunsthalle, Bratislava, Zero Meridian, 2016, ZAHORIAN & VAN ESPEN Bratislava, Global Control and Censorship, curators Bernhard Serexhe, Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, 2017, New Synagogue, Žilina; Fifth Force, curator Lily Hall, ZAHORIAN & VAN ESPEN Praha, 2018, Constructive Lyric, Curator Mária Janušová, GAMP, Pilsen; Curator Barbora Szalai, 2018, Gallery Krokus, Bratislava) . In 2018 he published the author’s book Fifth Force in cooperation with the Zahorian & Van Espen gallery. Kyša currently works as an assistant in the Studio of Spatial Communications + Anton Čierný. He lives and works in Bratislava.

Radovan Čerevka (1980) also studied at the Department of Fine Arts and Intermedia of the Technical University of Košice, at the Studio of Free Creativity 3D of prof. Juraj Bartusz. He earned his PhD at the Department of Intermedia and Multimedia at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he later habilitated as associate professor with the work Critical Reflection of News Media in Art. In 2013 he was awarded the Oscar Čepan Prize. His work has been presented at many exhibitions at home and abroad. Currently, he leads the Studio of Free Creativity 3D at the Department of Fine Arts and Intermedia of the Technical University of Košice. He lives and works in Košice.