Central Slovakian Gallery in Banská Bystrica
cordially invites you to the opening of the exhibition
I TAKE PLEASURE IN ATTENTION
Lucia Luptáková
Jana Kapelová
Matej Gavula
Oldřich Morys
Curator: Zuzana L. Majlingová
Opening: Tuesday February 6th, 2018 at 5 P. M.
Venue: Central Slovakian Gallery, Praetorium at Š. Moyses sq. 25, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia
Duration: February 7, 2018 – April 10, 2018
An exhibition project entitled I TAKE PLEASURE IN ATTENTION is a result of artistic research, which uses the space of the Praetorium building of the Central Slovakian Gallery in Banská Bystrica. Praetorium – originally a renaissance city hall – was built after 1500. It is an important historical and architectural monument situated in the medieval fortress area of the town. The building itself has gone through its own architectural journey, lived through several construction periods and changes in purpose. In the recent history, there were located the Roman Catholic school as well as the first exhibition of the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising.
The exhibition dedicated to Praetorium was initiated by the artist Lucia Luptáková, who has been exploring its premises for several years, and the curator, who both kindly invited to participate in the project the following guests: Jana Kapelová, Matej Gavula a Oldřich Morys. The artists have each responded to physical perception of the Praetorium building, its emotional charge and symbolic value, including individual, collective as well as institutional and social memory of the place.
One of the exhibition’s objective is also to share an idea of openness of the gallery as an institution, which is now in charge of the building, and which has, for several decades, dictated its social functions. In the exhibition, the institution’s openness shows by providing a free access to all the premises of the building, and by focusing one’s artistic attention on maintenance, non-exhibition space of the halls, cellar, attic or loggia. These are indeed the spots where most of the architectural details, referring to historical periods of the building’s construction, have been preserved. The monumentality of empty exhibition halls of the gallery, being the result of the most recent functionalist’s reconstruction, is left alone by the artists in its own architectural and spatial purity to shine. In addition to the fine art works – created as site-specific installations, videoprojections, performances and objects, the visitors have chance to sense more intensively the complex state of the building, including the details, which remain hidden from the eyes of the spectators during regular operation of the gallery.
An exhibition project I TAKE PLEASURE IN ATTENTION deals with materiality and historical layers of Praetorium – particularly the rooms, but also the building as an architectonic piece with its own physical transformations, changes in purpose as well as various semantic layers of its vicinity. The project does not propose some classical materialized artefacts, rather it is a guidebook on how to view the immediate reality. It concerns the process of approaching the reality rather than offering an absolute view that is framed by the space of the gallery’s exhibition hall. Creativity and focused attention is to be seen as a principle, which tries anew to look into the past and the present. The information is synthesized into a unique event, which in turn becomes data for the future.
Zuzana L. Majlingová
Supported by Slovak Arts Council.
Free Admission.