Post absurdum, 2023
Site-specific Installation, ink and marker drawings, appropriated materials including maps, photographs and torn pages from books,
spines from books, book covers, wood, stones
Flatgallery, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2023
Klára Kusá’s solo exhibition post-absurdum stands as a kind of register of the appearances of various
modes of things in different stages of their visibility. They emerge from the indistinct space between the idea of a library or an archive and are generated not only in the artist’s mind, but als in the interpretative experience of the perceptive viewers. This creates a performative situation built on the artist’s hybrid strategies of conceptual art and photography. The intervention of images and objects of former books and their spines, which are reflections of their origin and content. We enter the “encapsulated” intimate space of the gallery with the artist, who understands public artistic expression as a repetition of the ritual of appropriation with the potential to transform both the appropriating and the appropriated at the same time. Repetition is possible ad absurdum, i.e., to the point of reaching the threshold of the absurd, the incongruous, the deranged, the edge, the unfathomable, the lost, etc. The prefix post- (as usual) subtly changes the meaning of the original term and refers to a setting in which the meaning of the word has passed away or is no longer relevant or valid. Paradox is embedded in Klára Kusá’s way of thinking, full of doubts, inconclusiveness and even trepidation. This is illustrated by her interest in the many forms of emptiness, nothingness or something without designation and meaning, for example in her ruins of books qua post-absurd organisms of the post-world.
Lucia G. Stach
Post absurdum (Bookvision), 2023
Site-specific Installation, scans of book spines printed on fine art paper, marker drawings, photographs and torn pages from books
Galerie Fakulty umeni (GAFU), Ostrava, Czech republic, 2023
Post absurdum reinstalled in another space as a part of Bookvision exhibition, site specificity means that every time another set of materials are used, despite the message behind the installation remains the same.
Sign here: (yesno to be continued), 2022
Site-specific installation, sprayed canvases in space, unwanted canvases of previous students found in the basement,
appropriated and sprayed over, rolled paper sprayed over, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2022
YES and NO as a gesture and antigesture at the same time that are meeting each other and communicating with each other.
YES includes NO and NO includes YES. At a certain point, they meet to create a whole unit.
The signature as a denial of signature. Signature as a challenge to another signature.
Elements of accidental (anti)gestures.
A gesture as a way out of this madness. A gesture is a way out of this madness. A gesture must represent freedom.
YES has to not-/lose NO and NO has to not-/lose YES.
Appropriation, or a certain kind of appropriating in visual early postmodern art does not mean theft, as long as the one who engages in the appropriation deliberately acknowledges it at the same time. Additionally, he or she knows how to visibly change the context (and not only the context of time).
Jiří David
Tierra non grata, 2022
Installation in space, cut, sprayed or painted canvas, fabrics creating various objects from the old Merina factory, Nova vlna, Trencin, 2022
Merina, the old factory in Trencin, Slovakia was once an iconic building producing textile for customers all around the world. It used to employ thousands of people up until it was destroyed by developers and replaced by a small office building, AUDOV. As a part of my research, I entered the area where the factory was constructed under the supervision of AUDOV workers. During my visit, I received a gift from the designer: small pieces of leftover fabrics from the factory. I decided to use them to create an installation in Nova Vlna, a gallery placed inside the Merina complex. As a part of my internship in the department of painting, I interconnected my paintings with the received fabrics to create an installation in space. The goal was clear, to give a new meaning to these textiles bearing in mind the destroyed factory building and traumatized employees that have no idea what will happen to them in the future.
YESNO, 2022
Installation in space, ink drawings on paper / old book papers, old book covers torn apart and written upon using ink, hanged by needle in space,
A4 – A space for contemporary culture, 2022
YESNO, a world of contradiction, with the book as its basic element. We have pushed this medium aside, it is too slow and old-fashioned. A book is passé. Michel Houellebecq describes this situation in his essay Approaches to Disarray. Nevertheless, he adds that literature will survive: „It’s enough if you pause, turn off the radio, disconnect the television, not buy anything anymore, avoid craving to buy anything. It’s enough if you do not take part, do not know, temporarily halt all mental activity. It’s literally enough if you remain still for a few seconds.“
I am still, placed outside the movement and rush of this civilization. I am turning off notifications, I am visiting nature. I am taking unwanted books from book shelters, filling the emptiness with the nonsensical word “YESNO” or its antonym “NOYES”. Automatic ink drawings are created as a result. Sometimes, one gesture or signature is enough. Other times, I am adding symbols or the nonsensical two words “do-lorem ipsum” to the artworks. I am inspired by the author Lubomir Durcek and his drawings. The artist lived during the revolutionary period of multiple changes. Currently, we live in a similarly tense situation again, just in a different time and under different circumstances. The impossible has become possible. Therefore, I am connecting the words YES and NO together and creating a single unit, I am acknowledging and denying the drawing, and finally, connecting these opposite terms. In books, I find a slowing down, a refuge from the maddening world outside. I do believe books will survive. As Michel Houellebecq puts it: „Literature will handle anything, it will get used to anything, it rummages through garbage, it licks the wounds of misfortune.“
*Lorem ipsum is a name for a nonsensical textin Latin, used as a default beginning of every graphic document when inserting a block of text. The original text comes from the book „On the ends of good and evil” written by Cicero. The preposition „do-„ is placed in front of the word „lorem“ under „dolorem ipsum“. We can translate it as “pain itself”. I am deconstructing the nonsensical typesetting text in this way and placing its original meaning into the word. I am pointing out how we forgot to be interested in the original meaning of the words that are placed in front of us. Even if they are nonsensical.