Emöke Vargová – You’re Sitting on My Brain, 2001

Emöke Vargová (* 1965)
You’re Sitting on My Brain, 2001

mixed media, object, height 67 cm, Ø 107 cm
from the collection of from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2010

The fact that the artist entered the scene around the mid 1990’s is only a basic identifier of her work, which ranks her among the women artists who shifted the hitherto latent, in our circumstances of art before 1989 also problematicly perceived, category of feminist art to the new updated coordinates. It was a period when the tendency of post-feminist art, which is considered one of the developmental stages of feminism – intensified in Slovak visual arts as well – one that rejects their radical language and emphasizes gender discourse in art. As in the case of her generational companions, E. Vargová’s work deals with this category in an analytical and, in her case, certainly also in an ironic way.
Emöke Vargová’s work is characterized by essential femininity. It is definitely coded in the selection of materials from which the author realized the objects and installations. These are soft, non-sculptural and transparent materials (especially wax, textiles, plastic, paper), but also its creation in the late 90.s and early zero years (including the work from PMI III display) appeared thinking about the functionality of things and the boundary between art and functionality – also because she realized several objects / furniture that carried a significant element of personification – e.g. a series of furniture “dressed” in clothes. The Medusa (2000) object, presented in the At Home Gallery in Šamorín, also dates from this period – it was an oversized “chandelier” sewn from a number of bras, “floating” in a blue-lit space – in the first sense as a reference to women in the synagogue, who could be present only in the so-called upper gallery. In that period, the artist’s self-referential approach became apparent, thinking about the (im) possibility of a universal individual, in which skills traditionally understood as female and male would coexist. By appropriating those belonging to the “stronger sex”, she created the Lagerfeld (2001) installation as part of the (in) time exhibition at PGU in Žilina, where she inserted various small objects associated with d.i.y. (wires, sheet metal parts, pliers and other tools) into geometric composition into the plaster wall or the installation Fell! (2003), where she left a (provocatively) drilled drill in the wall after describing part of the clock face.
Object / stool You are Sitting on my Brain with its precise upholstery processing – again, there is a reflection on the functionality of art, but also a “feminine” effort to improve and aestheticize efficiency. The statement “you are sitting on my brain” can be deciphered as a fragment from an imaginary battle of the sexes – a clash of the worlds of a man and a woman with typical codes of thought, which is characterized by a degree of presumed mutual (mis) understanding. The object was created for the exhibition New Connection (2001) in NG in Prague, where the winners of the TONAL award (now the Oskar Čepan Award) and its Czech equivalent of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award exhibited.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Gabika Binderová – East Side Story, 2003

Gabika Binderová (* 1975)
East Side Story, 2003

video, 9´50´´, color, sound
screenplay and direction: Gabika Binderová, camera: Miroslav Liška, Gabika Binderováfrom the collection of from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2017

At the beginning of the zero years, Gabika Binderová established herself as the author of installations, objects and videos that communicate the nuances of the microworld of an artist, but also woman, mother of twins – boys and wife. If we want to categorize her work in connection with gender art, which declares that the category of gender is a more complex unit, is not given biologically and is more social construction, it is necessary to look at Gabika Binder’s work through the optics of marital art, which according to the artist and curator Lenka Klodová (CZ) is characterized by the fact that it originates and is realized in an institutionalized union. However, it also indicates that the topics covered by the aspect of partnership, where gender is part of a wider range of contexts associated with marriage (psychological, social and sociological factor).
Gabika Binderová’s works from the beginning of the millennium were created as her own projects, but she also often collaborated with her husband Erik Binder: Mars and Venus Binder, Kunst-fa (as Kunst family), in which they left the viewer (or gallery visitor – especially the exhibition 2JA in Municipal Gallery in Rimavská Sobota, 2001) to enter their marital microworld. They were realized mainly as installations consisting of realities from everyday life – so as to mediate the shades of the partnership, but also the physical or mental differences of its actors. In this respect, the joint (partnership-targeted) projects of Binder (now ex) spouses in our artistic environment are pioneering, and a decade later a similar art pattern, where the main code is partnership / marriage, was submitted by artists Pavlína Fichta Čierna and Anton Čierny in several joint videos from 2011 – 2012.
The video East side story is a self-portrait in the words of the artist. It reflects her family relationships, but its important element is also the sociological aspect – it shows the opposition of the periphery, where the artist comes from, and the center where she worked and lived as an artist. It is a compressed (visually compacted) road-movie capturing the journey of the Binder family from Bratislava to eastern Slovakia. In her words, it is also a metaphor for everyday life – just as the artist knows her day and its individual stops by heart, so the train from West to East and back has its own fixed and unchanging route. The plot of the film is intentionally cycled – at the end of their journey, the actors get off at the same place where they got on, as if they got nowhere, thus mixing time and space into one whole. The work was included in the collection for the exhibition Permanent Romanticism (GMB Bratislava, 2003), which presented romantic approaches in contemporary art, also at the exhibition Autopoesis (SNG Bratislava, 2006) devoted to the aspect of self-presentation, self-reflection, but also self-mythization of personality of an artist.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Lucia Dovičáková – It is Scientifically Proven that …, 2003 and Stronger than Yesterday, 2005

Lucia Dovičáková (* 1981)
It is Scientifically Proven that We Select a Suitable Donor of Genetic Information According to Certain Criteria, 2003

oil on canvas, 160 x 100 cm

Stronger than Yesterday, 2005
video, PAL, sound, color, 1´26´´

from the collection of from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2017

The artist introduced a significant code of self-reference into contemporary painting, it was an important part of her work, with which she entered the art scene just after the middle of the zero years and is still present today. Even now (fifteen years after finishing her studies), the dominant actor of her paintings is a woman in a wide range of typologies, we can really use the term “heroine” (and intentionally in quotation marks), as it covers her various forms: girl, wife, mother, pensioner, but also a mythological creature, a vampire or a Victorian model, and lately also a type that is (seemingly) submissive. However, we are still surprised by the artist’s talent to select a certain reality and point it out without embellishments. Some time ago, I wrote about Lucia Dovičáková’s paintings that they were subversive – and they never stopped being so. However, not so much the topics she has addressed and is addressing (we would normally describe them as intimate and partly still taboo or even perceived as irrelevant – as they are, for example, physicality altered by motherhood, the lunar cycle, fear and helplessness in caring for a newborn, breastfeeding peripetia, sexual fantasies, reluctance to clean the household, etc.) are the subversive element. It is her straightforwardness in which she approaches them, thus changing the perspective we look at (our own) female microworlds. And it is the changes in perspective that are the points mentioned.
Aquiring a pair of paintings and a video could seem like a risky step, as it is a juvenile – both works were created by the artist during her studies. However, both are – a protophase, a precursor of her self-reference. The video Stronger than Yesterday (in the year of its creation the artist completed an internship inatthe Studio of Spatial Communications with A. Čierny at VŠVU – several videos come from that time – perhaps less known, but at least from the point of view of the media important pendants of her paintings) is based on visualization and the soundtrack of James Cameron’s film Terminator. It is an expressively tuned and metaphorically grasped reaction of a woman who solves the hopelessness of her relationship with a man by radically giving up part of herself. A similar element of “scanning” reality through the eye of the cyborg – as an ironic-critical evaluation of the character traits and physical qualities of former partners and at the same time self-reflection of their “choices”, the artist used in the painting – It is Scientifically Proven that We Choose a Suitable Donor of Genetic Information According to Certain Criteria. Both works create a thematic diptych, the leitmotif of which (apart from the element of the artist’s nascent radical self-reference of that time) is also a form of appropriation of the visual motif from the action film.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Eva Filová – No Difference, 2001

Eva Filová (* 1968)
No Difference, 2001

6 tetrapack objects, printing, laminated paper, milk powder
from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2017

Eva Filová’s works cross the boundaries of the concept of radical privacy, I guess the most, and in her case the statement that private / personal / female is political is really valid. Stepping out is a consistent critical approach to selected aspects of social, cultural and political reality in Slovakia, which it comments very openly, which is the essence of her provocative artistic language.
Eva Filová reaches for elements in the realization of mixed media forms of works, which on the one hand refer to privacy – e.g. a series of pieces of clothing in black and white (non-) color, consisting of pieces of underwear, provided with terms originating from opposing liberal and conservative camps (celibacy, pro-choice, separation, registered partnership, etc.) – in the series Engaged Wardrobe (2006 – 2014) ), whether they come from the political-social sphere – as unused ballots, which she illustrated with erotic drawings (Sweet Tomorrows series, 1992 – 2002). But also those that undermine the still present “ostalgia” – polystyrene letters from agitation boards, which, however, consist of sarcastic and subversive texts (Veľký testament, 2003).
The artist’s video work is similarly characterized by a radical accent. The artist (and in this case it is really a committed approach) expresses a supportive opinion on the free choice of women in abortion issues and also responds to the close connection of Slovak politics with the Catholic Church (video Opportunity of Choice, 2003). A particular section of her work is the submersive deconstruction of gender stereotypes which are mainly found in Slovak folk traditions, e.g. “šibačka” – in the video Initiation of Fertility (2003), which she realized with the artist Peter Kalmus.
The series of objects No Difference was created for the exhibition Large Milk (Nitra Gallery), whose simple concept – to compose an exhibition of artistic reactions and interpretations on the theme of milk, was an artistic initiative. The exhibition foreshadowed the following gallery and curatorial activities of artists in the zero years (eg the establishment of the Bratislava Gallery HIT), but at the same time was proof that even a banal concept can achieve a special result. From the formal point of view, the artist’s realization is completely in the intention of the topic – they are tetrapack boxes (usually filled with dairy products, filled with powdered milk here, and still characterized by the appropriate scent). However, when processing / redesigning the packaging, the artist used the method of appropriating images from other spheres – from art history to porn magazines in aesthetics typical for neoconceptual art, which also works with images from the world of pop culture and advertising, and thus ironically commented on the factor of several functions of the female body.
The work was included in a collection presenting the works of selected Slovak artists at the international art show Gender Check in 2009 in Vienna, which was the first comprehensive exhibition presenting art from Eastern Europe since the 60.s in terms of gender roles.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Anetta Mona Chişa and Lucia Tkáčová – 10 Tips for Eastern European Women, 2006

Anetta Mona Chişa (*1975) and Lucia Tkáčová (*1977)
10 Tips for Eastern European Women, 2006

pen on paper, 5 pcs each 21 x 29,7 cm
from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artists in 2010

A pair of women artists – according to art historian of Serbian origin Bojana Pejić – founded a “policy of friendship” more than twenty years ago, through which they realized cooperative work. At present, after uncovering many of its layers and ways of thinking of the artists, it is clear that it is characterized and united by the resistance to the “postpolitical and post-feminist world, expressing feminist skepticism, exposing the depth of capitalist power and questioning its effects on art. creation and society as we know it ”(B. Pejić).
At the beginning of the zero years, their joint work was perceived as a continuation of art devoted to gender issues, but even then it became apparent that the artists deconstructed the categories of postfeminist and feminist art in several works – which they expressed by organizing a curatorial exhibition The Room of Their Own (2003), which was metaphorically actually their work of art and set this attitude for a long time. Their art, their relationship to it and also the path of (their) art into the deeper echelons and accepted structures of not only on the Slovak but also on the international art scene, must be perceived in connection with their position of artists from the former Ostblock. And it was the path of their art outside the local coordinates (which may not apply to artists only) that the artists devoted themselves to for a time: examining the functioning of the institution of art and the network of present relationships around it. The program also includes a series of videos called Dialectics of Subjection #2 and #4) from 2005 and 2006, in which they judge curators and important world politicians in light “girly” conversations only on the basis of physical characteristics and attractiveness – attacking power and influence with their own (female) weapons.
The couple’s participation in the Venice Biennale (2011) took a self-relativizing approach as contradiction, an overview of the situation, but also questioning of an important exhibition of art, and thus of the mechanisms and processes associated with it. They placed a handwritten text of 80:20 on the façade of the Romanian Pavilion — this ratio expressing 20 of their reasons for not being at the Biennale (listed in several points) and 80 of the reasons for being there.
The degree of finding employment, building one’s position (and career) is also the leitmotiv of the work 10 tips of an Eastern European Woman. The artists subversively comment on the issue of immigrant minorities who try to work and (survive) in Western Europe. The project is based on a cynical reflection on the functioning of the world in the West, in which much can be achieved through personal relationships. Adapted to five Eastern European (post-socialist) contexts and languages (Slovak, Czech, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian), presented without an English translation, the tips consist of naming various possible strategic “moves” – meant, of course, with a dose of appropriate irony, on which women from Eastern and Central European countries can concentrate – in an effort to break through in the Western world.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Ladislav Čarný – Ironing for Men, 2004

Ladislav Čarný (* 1949)
Ironing for Men (from the series Housework for Men), 2004

interactive sound system, ironing board, iron, PC, cabling, laundry basket
from the collection of the the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2017

In an interview about his work in direct connection to this installation, Ladislav Čarný stated that, thanks to this piece, he is “suspected by some women of being an essentialist feminist.” This attribute also relates to another interractive installation Vacuum Cleaning for men (2001), both belonging to his series Housework for Men. If we were to view this series or rather the two works from the perspective of the subject, they really form a unique category of works in which the artist – from the position of a man – reflects the issue of the division of gender roles and their respective activities performed by women and men. The thought predecessor of this installation is the mentioned work, where a viewer revealed an excerpt of a text by the artist Meret Oppenheim by vacuuming a carpet in a darkened room, in which she says that since the patriarchy was established, men forced women to experience their own femininity twice – they are like women to the squared. In terms of the form of the work – an interactive installation — it is a continuation of a group of works by the artist in which he works with the text: it concerns its meaning, problems associated with its perception, but also interpretation and inability to grasp it – which the author demonstrated by the interaction with the installation – while vacuming it was not possible to read the whole – under UV light in the tube of the vacuum cleaner, only the relevant part always appeared on the carpet created with photoluminous paint. Working with light in various forms: mirroring, reflection, but also on the basis of the described technique of its emergence in the dark through light text, is an important indicator of his working with light in various forms: mirroring, reflection, but also on the basis of the described technique of its emergence in the dark through light text, is an important indicator of his work.
The work Ironing for Men similarly contains an element of interactivity – the direct physical presence and activity of an individual (and an important element of the works in the field of installation for the artist), which must perform it to work – by pressing the hand on the iron and sliding it across the board. The work is a statement given from the perspective of a man, but it certainly does not allude to the idea that the artist (with a dose of “machismo”) would agree with the problematic division of domestic work into women’s and men’s. On the contrary: he personally considers this division to be a gender sensitive issue, but also, using subtle exaggeration, he aims to disrupt and relativize this scheme, as the family construct is not only given biologically – it is an unstable and variable category, but above all social relationships and interactions.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Dorota Sadovská – Slough, 2003

Dorota Sadovská (* 1973)
Slough, 2003

video, color, sound, 73´
from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2017

Dorota Sadovská (* 1973) devoted herself to painting in the 1990s, at a time when the face of Slovak fine art was more characterized by a preference for media and intermedia forms of art – even in the young generation to which she, as an exclusive painter at the time, belonged. At that time and in the following decade, she introduced elements into her work, which gradually became her license – a realistically depicted figure, references to the attributes of saints in figural painting, also work with the perspective of the figure, and later dealing with clothing as a processual category. From the point of view of crossing the boundaries of the media, her spatial pictorial installations were specific, in which she adhered to her own painting program, but at the same time they can also be perceived as a reaction to the spatial code of 90.s art.
A special feature in her work is the elaboration of the issue of the body / corporality. In a series of photographs with this name, she deliberately deformed the attributes of femininity – breasts with the pressure of her hand, where the result distorted the idea of the beauty of the female body (as a common myth and also the breast as a symbol of sexuality). The perceived performativeness in the background of the creation of the photographic image referred to the body as a haptic material, not primarily as a category for the painting of a figure.
Despite the general interest in her paintings by collectors and galleries and the dominance in her work, especially in its early stages, Dorota Sadovská is also the author of several videos which, despite a relatively small number, significantly enriched the Slovak video art register after 2000. One of them is Undressing from the Skin, where she works with body mass in a similar manner.
Video is actually a digital image in the form of a large-screen projection, changing over time only gradually and very unnoticed. The minimally noticeable movement of naked intertwined male and female bodies, where at first glance it is not possible to see which is which, is accompanied by an emotionally tuned composition by the musician Martin Burlas. In the context of her work, this is one of the most significant works of the artist depicting sexuality and corporality in such an open way. The artist’s painting trajectory, reaching for photography and finally the above example of the media type of work, says a lot about the author’s understanding of the figural work complex in relation to the medium – art theorist Katarína Rusnáková mentions the image transformation process – from painting to video and digital media. example of the so-called remediation, where new media transform the previous ones (analogue).
Video – we can also talk about video painting- was part of the selection for exhibitions dedicated to the art of the first decade of the new millennium: Zero Years / Zeró Évek / Nuller Jahre (Bratislava House of Art, 2011, MODEM Debrecen, 2012, Fries Museum Berlin, 2013).

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Veronika Rónaiová – Small Desires, 2018

Veronika Rónaiová (* 1951)
Small Desires, 2018, a found work of art by Julián Filo – Small Desires, 1966

object / assemblage, 68 x 78 x 12 cm
from the collection of the from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
obtained by purchase from the artist in 2019

The work of Small Desires (2018/1966) was modified by the artist by inserting a reproduction of her own painting and modifying some parts of it, e.g. by placing a black tape over the girl’s eyes – this is a photo of her from childhood. The assemblage was presented at the exhibition Heritage (PGU Žilina, 2018). The main line of the exhibition was personal and artistic communication with his parents – artists Julián Filo and Mária Filová. The author worked with her works, but also artifacts from an inherited collection of works by her parents, from which she created pictorial installations supplemented with charcoal drawings, resp. created redrawings and textual comments of situations that relate to specific events in life with parents – opinion pendants to inherited works communicated from today’s position. In the form of a presentation – with wall installations of paintings, supplemented by the overlap of the drawing on the wall, the artist followed up on the exhibition Little Retrospective (2003, PGU in Žilina), in which she presented her older hyperrealistic paintings pre-compositionally thought-out “clusters” (also used at the exhibition Inventure GJK Trnava, 2002), moved the medium of the painting into an expanded field.
Her entries in the works of her father, pop art and hyperrealist painter Julián Filo (1921 – 2007), ie the joint presence of two original manuscripts in the canvas, in the case of this work in the mass of an assemblage, are – metaphorically speaking – a dialogue between them, reference to the past, but without the possibility of Julián Filo to entering it. Against the background of this radical penetration into autonomous artistic expression (how these may seem at first glance), however, in addition to the gesture of appropriating the work of art after a relative, we can develop a reflection on blurring the contours of authorship: the artist added herself to Julián Filo’s signature. Furthermore, the artist’s firm belief in the justification of this gesture: paintings or her own artistic inputs to his works are an opportunity for her to continue communicating with her father and confronting their artistic views. But they are also a representation of the relationship: father – daughter, artist – artist, which she – from a gender perspective – expresses in this way.
The line of art and art criticism, which dealt with aspects of feminism and postfeminism and became more visible in our environment only after 1990, revealed the importance of the author’s work from this point of view: the form of non-radical the work of Veronika Rónaiová has been present almost constantly: in hyperrealistic paintings, created using the airbrush technique, realized since the mid – 70.s. years, the central motive was a woman – especially her position in the family unit or the wider social structure. In the new millennium, the author became an important element of the so-called “Self-positioning”, in which he defines his authorial position also in a broader sense – in the artistic and artistic spheres.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.

Jana Želibská – Her View of Him, 1996

Jana Želibská (* 1941)
Her View of Him, 1996

video installation, video, 4´ 55´´, sound, color,
3 wooden shelves 39 x 28 cm, 3 glass aquariums 30 x 20 x 30 cm, 4 pink modurite balls, shower hose, 3 spot lamps with red bulbs, large screen projection
from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artist in 2019

Jana Želibská created a video installation for the exhibition Paradigm Woman (1996, PGU in Žilina) – its acquisition for the gallery’s collection (in 2019) and placement in the exhibition is in fact a return of this video installation to its home soil. The exhibition was part of a trilogy held in the years 1995 – 1997 in PGU in Žilina (Physical / Mental, Paradigm of a Woman, Between a Man and a Woman), curatorial projects by director Katarína Rusnáková. They took place in the newly reconstructed, for the then possibilities of regional galleries unique, exhibition space with the parameters of the so-called white cube (neutral white rooms without protruding architectural elements with a gray concrete floor). The aim of the exhibition was to specify at that time the increasingly visible tendency of postfeminist art through works realized on the basis of a libretto submitted by the curator. The trilogy presented works created on the basis of the parameters of the exhibition space, emphasizing the installation and video art, and its main line was the effort to establish, ie the created works to confirm the presence of works that deal with gender issues. The exhibition, in which Katarína Rusnáková selected Petra Nováková – Ondreičková, Ilona Németh and Denisa Lehocká, in addition to Jana Želibská, had the ambition to formulate “questions in a richly structured zone related to gender, identity, body, beauty, psyche, sexuality and intellectual potential of women ”(K. Rusnáková), but it was also a manifestation of concentrated interest in postfeminism and gender issues in art – the curator also acknowledges the inspiration for the exhibition Sense and Senibility. Women artists and Minimalism in the Nineties (1994, MoMA New York), which was very important for her in terms of the application of the discourse of postfeminism in Slovak art.
The construct of the video installation Her View of Him is the artist’s subversive reaction to the phenomenon of gaze – a man’s fixed gaze on a woman as an object of bodily desire, ie the proverbial “stare / sight”, but in addition to this gender stereotype also to the element of voyeurism the female body tends to unite. The artist came to its deconstruction, or simply said – to turn it upside down, so that in this case she was the one who focused her (Her) gaze on him – the showering man – in the video projected in the projection. The details of the bathroom contribute to the deconstruction – rewriting of this scheme: a dripping water tap, a shower hose, bullets, but also the soundtrack of the video (an erotic song by Serge Gainsbourg), by which the author shifts the meaning of the work to psychoanalytic contexts. The components from the video are “preserved” in three glass aquariums as material artifacts. The video installation complex is an autonomous environment, built of several components. Video, sound, together with the installed objects / aquariums, create a situation in which the man’s body is immaterial, dematerialized by the media image, and vice versa – the components from the video are emphasized as material objects. The video installation is also the first work presented in the Slovak gallery environment, where a large-scale video projection was used.

The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.

The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.