The exhibition Sleepers shows scenes from different places in the world, where mostly young people suffer consequences of global market. Sleep is a form of non violent resistance; or in other case just a response of the body to the unbearable working pressure. Sleep is also associated with sleeping mind – the blindness of populations – sometimes unconscious and sometimes desired blindness / sleep, because the reality is too hard to accept. Sleeping Chinese worker – after 16 hours shift asked to work overnight, sleeping African clandestine on the beach of Tangier – after nights of trying to cross the border between the camions, sleeping occupy protester in the tents somewhere in America… These are some of the scenes portrayed on the show.
Through
classical media – paintings, objects and text-this darker side of our universe
is explored and presented to visitors of Nastupiste 1-12 in Topolcany, Slovakia
– unconventional cultural unit in the corridor under bus station.
In rather small Slovak town Topolcany the
struggle of individuals around the globe seems as a distant issue, yet we live
in a world that is deeply interconnected.
And as Goya´s etching says-sleep
of mind produces monsters.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………...........
The writing under the whale:
Human age doesn´t mean for a planet much more
then for a whale breach for one breath in.
How would you visually imagine earth as one
living organism? As something strong and fragile at the same time, something
responding, reacting to our actions? I was looking for an image to illustrate
this idea. That led me to the vision of the city on the back of the whale:
while the city is over the sea level, the whale swims under it. It is a
question of will and question of time, if the whale will hold the city, or just
dive into deep waters.
I was invited to paint this image in the public
corridor under bus station of Topolcany in Slovakia. The town has its own
complicated history – once small historic town went through industrialization
during socialism, then privatization in the new regime and finally under the
effects of globalization, only few factories survived. A new wood based heating
factory was build – in winter a building that each day consumes a few camions
of wood, a little piece of forest. The heating factory with wood surrounding it
becomes one of the sites appearing on the top of the whale. The others are
furniture factory, beer factory/brewery (topvar used to be last beer brewed by
Slovak, locally owned brewery, now it is called by international corporation
and brewed outside of topolcany), train station, historical villa that suffered
through violent reconstruction that will turn it into a casino with underground
parking , and others.
The way we treat nature, the way we treat our
land, our heritage, our urban space affects us and our future.