The permanent exhibition of Stano Filko at the Central Slovak Gallery in Banská Bystrica, entitled HYDROZOA, was created in 2017 following the acquisition of an extensive collection of Filko’s archival and project-based works into the CSG’s collection. Its objective is to establish a uniquely conceived long-term exhibition of the neo-avant-garde artist Stano Filko (1937–2015) presented in a dynamically changing format of exhibitions, artist projects, and interventions. These emerge and dissipate over time as temporary autonomous zones within changing contexts, dimensions, and physical or alternative gallery environments. Unlike conventional formats built upon the commodification of artistic practice, the concept behind the HYDROZOA exhibition is to expand the understanding of Filko’s radical body of work by engaging contemporary artists who continuously update his legacy within new conceptual, relational frameworks and current research perspectives.
Exhibition Duration November 28, 2017 – June 13, 2037
Artists / Authors Barbora Demovič, František Demeter, Jakub Kopec, Ján Ballx, Jan Čumlivski, Mira Keratová, Petra Feriancová, Roman Bicek, Sarah Jones, Stano Filko, Tomáš Džadoň
Curator Mira Keratová
HYDROZOA, Stano Filko’s Permanent Exhibition at the Central Slovak Gallery:
Part Zero / Stano Filko, P O S T B I G B A N G S F A N T E B I G B A N G S F
February 21, 2017 – April 30, 2017
Praetorium
November 28, 2017 – February 11, 2018
Bethlen’s House
Link to PDF H0 (PDF, 553 KB)
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Part One / Ján Ballx, HOB
March 21, 2018 – June 3, 2018
Bethlen’s House
Link to PDF H1 (PDF, 373 KB)
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Part Two / František Demeter & Tomáš Džadoň, PAVILION
June 27, 2018 – March 30, 2020
Bethlen’s House
Link to PDF H2 (PDF, 495 KB)
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Part Three / Sarah Jones, CORONAGRAPH
December 21, 2018 – December 31, 2023
Bethlen’s House
Link to PDF H3 (PDF, 503 KB)
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Part Four / František Demeter, Jakub Kopec, Jan Čumlivski, SPACE IS THE PLACE
August 4, 2020 – April 2, 2023 Bethlen’s House
Link to PDF H4 (PDF, 2.2 MB)
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Part Five / Petra Feriancová, CUM NATURA
October 16, 2020 – May 6, 2021 Bethlen’s House
Link to PDF H5 (PDF, 586 KB)
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Part Six / Roman Bicek, OBST & MUSE
September 16, 2023 – December 3, 2023 Praetorium
Link to PDF H6 (PDF, 3.8 MB)
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Part Seven / Mira Keratová (text), Barbora Demovič (graphic design), GENEALOGY OF MODERNIST ESSENTIALISM
Link to PDF H7 (PDF, 7.3 MB)
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Part Eight / Svätopluk Mikyta, HOLE
Stano Filko was a Slovak neo-avant-garde artist of the 1960s generation, best known for creating total installations and environments. Among his most famous projects are the readymade events Happsoc from the 1960s (the first of which was a collaboration with Alex Mlynárčik and Zita Kostrová) and the transcendental environment White Space in a White Space from the 1970s (originally with Miloš Laky and Ján Zavarský). In 2015, the Central Slovak Gallery acquired a vast collection of over 700 works by Filko. This acquisition consists of smaller objects and works on paper, functioning as an artistic archive rich in research potential. It contains autonomous works as well as documentation of Filko’s exhibition projects, numerous no-longer-extant or continuously re-worked spatial works, and pieces explaining the development of his unique ideological color system created to articulate his holistic concept of the world. A retrospective exhibition of Stano Filko drawn from this collection, titled P O S T B I G B A N G S F A N T E B I G B A N G S F, was held at the Central Slovak Gallery’s Praetorium building from February 21 to April 30, 2017.
The new format of Filko’s permanent exhibition—curated and dramaturgically conceived by Mira Keratová—opened to the public in the foyer of the CSG’s Bethlen’s House on November 28, 2017. Its core principle was an open-ended duration and an adaptable nature, realized through individual temporary exhibitions, artist projects, and interventions responding directly to Stano Filko’s collection at the CSG. The HYDROZOA project was simultaneously conceived as an alternative to the traditional model of a permanent exhibition—aiming to repeatedly activate, interpret, and contextualize Filko’s work within new frames of reference.
Currently, this function has been assumed by the CSG Social Library space. The principle of dynamic presentation and re-contextualization of Filko’s work continues here through a regularly rotated showcase of selected works from the collection, set within fresh spatial and semantic frameworks. Rather than being displayed in isolation, the works enter into a dialogue with the library’s research-oriented character, rendering Filko’s output accessible not merely as an artistic object, but as a source of knowledge and ongoing interpretation.
Part of this intervention includes utilizing the library’s window surfaces, which reference Filko’s distinctive color nomenclature—white, blue, and red—and his complex system of biological, cosmological, metaphysical, and transcendent planes. This spatial intervention expands the HYDROZOA concept beyond its original exhibition venue, connecting Filko’s practice with the library’s function as a site for research, education, and the mediation of visual art discourse.
Today, public collecting institutions frequently serve as venues for consecrating artists as commercial celebrities or stars, typically through retrospective exhibition formats. Museums and galleries rarely act as experimental platforms anymore; instead, they are becoming sites of luxury design productions complete with well-structured public programming. They often smooth over the bold, provocative ideas of the art presented to ensure it remains palatable to mainstream audiences—easily digestible, particularly for the target middle class. Art institutions and public collections are tethered to art market demands and consumer mechanisms; investment strategies (and institutional practices at large) are deeply affected by the overall commodification and monetization of the art world. These conditions impact not only artistic production but also its representation. In response to calls for reforming and regenerating art institutions—and re-evaluating the political-economic conditions of their operation—the Central Slovak Gallery offers an iconoclastic format for Stano Filko’s permanent exhibition. HYDROZOA is designed not to boost the commercial value of artwork, but rather, in alignment with Filko’s legacy, to expand knowledge while diminishing the primacy of the art object.
HYDROZOA, Stano Filko’s Permanent Exhibition at the Central Slovak Gallery
The first chapter of the program, HOB, was realized by self-taught artist and psychiatrist by profession, Ján Ballx. He created an installation incorporating selected works by Stano Filko from the Central Slovak Gallery’s collection, engaging with Filko’s output through an art brut aesthetic closely aligned with Filko’s own practice. Conceptually, Ballx’s exhibition explored the notions of transcendence, the extraterrestrial, finitude, and infinity within the theoretical frameworks of Radical Hospitality and Radical Ethics.
The second chapter, PAVILION, was created by the artist duo František Demeter and Tomáš Džadoň. They constructed a monumental, site-specific spatial installation at the CSG made of aluminum profiles, inspired by Filko’s legendary studio on Snežienková Street below Kamzík Hill in Bratislava (established in 1965). Sensually, the installation evokes Filko’s theories on dimensions, which he formulated within his so-called Psychophilosophical System.
The third chapter was produced by Australian artist Sarah Jones, who conducted research into Stano Filko’s work and the collection held by the Central Slovak Gallery. The output is a text presented in a hybrid format of personal and theoretical narrative. Printed as a poster accompanied by a visual diagram, the text contextualizes Filko’s work and cosmology alongside the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (the philosophy of organism).
STANO FILKO was born on June 15, 1937 (he himself also cited June 13 or 14, 1937) in Veľká Hradná near Trenčín. According to his own accounts, he survived two clinical deaths in 1945 and 1952—following a fall in a quarry and an electric shock—events to which he frequently referenced in his art. From 1956 to 1959, he studied at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Bratislava. Between 1960 and 1965, he pursued studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava under Prof. Dezider Milly and Peter Matejka in the Monumental Painting Studio.
In 1964–1965, he created the installation Altars of Today (exhibited at the Dwelling of Today and Reality exhibition at the Karlovo Náměstí Gallery in Prague, 1967), as well as the readymade event Happsoc, Bratislava, May 2–8, 1965, in collaboration with Alex Mlynárčik and Zita Kostrová. That same year saw Happsoc II, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, 7 Days of Creation. In 1973, alongside Miloš Laky and Ján Zavarský, he formulated the White Space project (exhibited as White Space in a White Space, House of Arts Brno, 1974).
In 1981, he emigrated to Germany, residing primarily in Düsseldorf. In 1982, he exhibited at Documenta 7 in Kassel, displaying photographs from the Transcendention series alongside the white Škoda car in which he had fled socialist Czechoslovakia. From 1982 onwards, he lived in New York, focusing on Neo-Expressionist painting. He returned to Slovakia in 1990 and began renovating his studio on Snežienková Street below Kamzík in Bratislava, transforming it into a unique architectural space structured around his Psychophilosophical System, which he continued developing long-term. In 2005, he represented the country at the Venice Biennale in the Czechoslovak Pavilion alongside Jan Mančuška and Boris Ondreička. He held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions worldwide. He passed away on October 23, 2015, in Bratislava.
– Mira Keratová