Author: Juraj Kollár
Curator: Lucia Gregorová
30 October – 01 December 2012
Juraj Kollár studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, at the studio of prof. Daniel Fischer in 1999 – 2003. Afterwards, he spent two years (2003 – 2005) studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, at the studio of prof. Zdeněk Beran. Juraj Kollár has been awarded several prizes in different countries.
Juraj Kollár´s solo exhibition at ZAHORIAN&co GALLERY is a presentation of the artist´s rese-arch reflected in his latest works. It introduces his new installation of works of large dimensions which he has focused on for several months. So far, Kollár´s works have been characterized by shif-ting the centre of gravity of the painting out of the canvas area. It acts as a point of a missing figure in privately “symbolic“ landscapes or urban sceneries consciously reaching abstraction. Parallelly, the artist has been focusing also on large-scale abstract colour compositions.
In Kollár´s current works, the dilemma between depicting reality and abandoning it is perse-vering, as is the issue of closing oneself into his own world. He is addressing the issue of grasping the reality and at the same time its impossibility due to natural obstacles to the artist´s view. The name of the exhibition underlining time and duration has not been chosen by chance. It‘s the result of the author´s approach to continuously testing the painting as the inter-medium while working with his own photographic model and own technique. Its basis is the thick layered oil on canvas applied through the plastic grid or directly in vigorous gestures. An important ingredient of Kollár´s current work is thematizing the time vector of the creation of a work, observing the actual process during which a living item “becomes“ a part of the artifact with its borders of “completion“ rather blurred. Generous works named Sklenené guľôčky/Little Glass Balls (oil on canvas, 2012) and Koruna stromu/Treetop (oil on canvas, 2012) thus continue in the author´s path of re-considering the theme of the artist´s space by analysing its composition: it results in incomplete and infinite or, on the contrary, in the strictly limited view of a concrete visual impression. Sensual and emotive nature of Kollár´s paintings is well-balanced by the author´s own rules and by projecting the work as a painterly and intellectual process. The artist consciously frames his gesture, his feeling of colour tones and relief colour pastes within the timetable. He considers it as a task requiring discipline necessary to gradually reaching the final form of the work. Such a work enters the three-dimensional viewer´s area as a conceptionally well thought-through act but it is not an impersonal rational construction thanks to emotionally strong artistic expression which is one of the qualities continuously improving Kollár´s work. In comparison to his previous cycles, his latest works do not focus solely on the issue of a view, but also on the dynamism of creating, transforming, visibility and invisibility.
Juraj Kollár tests another of his capabilities – to view the whole picture in rather individual parts and to work with each item separately. It is the process similar to creating a puzzle, from the very beginning and without any certain result. Using the grid, the net refers to digitally generated picture rather than to the traditional figure and its place, since it interconnects and intermingles them. Almost obsessive framing of the painting sections within time sections functions also as a meditation exercise for Kollár who offers it through his large-scale painting installations to the spectator.
