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Strategies of Success

12. 5. 2022 – 2. 7. 2022
DUÚL Klíšská street

Opening: 11. 5. 2022 at 6 p. m.

Curator: Juraj Čarný

Artists: Maria Bartuszová, Anna Daučíková, Stano Filko, Miloš Laky, Ján Zavarský, Július Koller, Ján Mančuška, Stano Masár, Alex Mlynárčik, Ilona Németh, Roman Ondak, Tomáš Rafa

Contemporary Slovak, but also Czech, Polish and Hungarian visual art are increasingly becoming part of the collections of major world museums. However, awareness of the achievements of domestic authors abroad is relatively low in their countries. Scientific processing of facts, their critical analysis and local media coverage are lacking. International success is generally considered to be one of the highest achievable goals, both in the career of the artist and in many other fields – science, sports, business and politics. And the isolation of each art scene is largely due to a lack of international contacts in the past.

 

But how is it possible to attract opinion-forming curators deciding on acquisitions to the world’s most important museums so that art from the periphery comes to their attention? The international reputation and success of the artists beyond their region is, like life itself, the sum of unique contexts and circumstances. The sculptor Jozef Jankovič said that “accident and chance can play a much more important role in an artist’s life than talent and education”. Just as creating a quality work of art is usually not only possible thanks to good education and strategic planning, a successful artistic career is not entirely constructable and no longer predictable at all. If talent, education, skills and the right ratio of accidents and coincidences are mixed in the right proportions, several other factors are still needed. Among other things, the right timing, intellectual honesty, author’s consistency, systematicity and perseverance.

 

The exhibition Strategies of Success presents works of art by Slovak authors who are represented in the collections of major world museums, but it is not just a schematic import of works from world capitals. It is a selection of key works to the development of Slovak and Central European conceptual art, which have traveled around world museums, but not all of them are represented in museum collections. The exhibition is a kind of “dream of a museum”, a selection of works from the property of authors, private collections and museum collections, which together could create a representative collection.

 

The concept displayed is therefore, in a sense, a compromise based on available alternatives — not all major museums are open to the lending of works from their deposits.

We invite the audience to patient reading, active perception, playful participation and critical analysis.

 

Juraj Čarný, curator of the exhibition

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