June 9  –  September 10, 2006

National Gallery in Prague, Veletržní Palace, Small Hall, mezzanine

The exhibition is held under the auspices of Vítězslav Jandák, Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic, Ladislav Ballek, Ambassador of the Slovak Republic in Prague and Rudolf Chmel, Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic.

The exhibition is organized in co-operation with the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.

Realization of new exhibits for the exhibition space of the Veletržní Palace was financially supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic.

Author of the exhibition: Helena Musilová
Curators: Helena Musilová, Jiří Valoch
Consultants: Aurel Hrabušický, Rudolf Sikora

Architectural design of the exhibition: Rudolf Sikora, Helena Musilová

Graphic design of the exhibition: Jan Měřička

Several impulses prompted the idea to hold an exhibition of Rudolf Sikora’s work, one of them being the spatial concept of the Lesser Hall – traditionally used to present large-size artwork, and its confrontation with the difficult interior of the Veletržní Palace. Another was the need to present the complete oeuvre of Rudolf Sikora; although his work was known in Prague through several solo and collective exhibitions, it did not offer sufficient information about the artist, one of the most distinctive representatives of the contemporary Slovak and central European art scene with close ties to the Czech milieu, e.g. having worked as a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

While extensive and varied, Sikora’s work is also linked to several major ideological topos.
Rudolf Sikora is one of the most distinctive representatives of the contemporary Slovak and central European art scene. Using various techniques and procedures, he works with a number of major scientific, philosophical and socio-cultural themes. He focuses on political and environmental problems (such as his series Out of Town, cycle Pyramids or L’Arc de Triomphe / Bosnia, Bosnia!), cosmological studies defining the universe (such as his cycle Black Holes, Anthropic Principle) and, in the sphere of art, on the enduring influence of twentieth-century classical modernism (such as his long-term cycle Malevich’s Grave / Grave for Malevich). Sikora’s art works, texts and essays foreshadow many problems later faced by society.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Sikora was active in the world of unofficial artists and was a driving force behind many exhibitions, lectures and several joint art events, such as the first major presentation of the young generation “The First Open Studio” in 1970 or, later, the conceptual projects from the cycle ... Time... etc. Driven by his intense interest in mathematics and natural science, his lectures and other undertakings dealt with the relationship between art and science.

In 1989, he co-founded the movement Public Against Violence and began to work on its Coordination Committee. In the years that followed, he actively opposed the division of Czechoslovakia. In 1990–2004, he was a professor at the College of Fine Arts in Bratislava, and in 2002 he helped establish the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Technical University in Košice, where he still teaches.

In 1969–1980, Sikora focused on work reflecting his strong relationship with the environment and environmentally-oriented thinking – his first project was Out of Town (1970), showing a way out of polluted towns into pristine nature with the use of arrows. In many of his cycles and series, Sikora brings out the alarming relationship of the Earth’s inhabitants to their own environment (Cuts Through Civilization, Exclamation Mark) and creates fictitious “models” of a society bound to devour itself – unless it maintains a necessary balance (the cycle Pyramids). In his cycle Circulation of Life, he begins to work with the symbols → representing birth, energy and decay and continues to use them, e.g. in the cycle Black Holes, as symbols of infinite energy and the everlasting circulation of life. Sikora creates “his own” universe in the cycle consisting of the symbols for birth and decay and using analogues of scientific hypotheses.

Sikora’s work in 1980–1988 is more individualistic – the artist’s “universe” now includes a human figure expressing unity or desire for unity between man and the cosmos (Anthropic Principle, Between the Heaven and Earth, Constellations). The large cycle Touches (No, No, Yes? and Highway (Day? Night?) entertains the possibility of choosing different paths in life, while Touching the Grave records the process of living. The period is completed with the cycle And to What I Used to Call: I! in which the long-constructed unity (and de facto also the artist) disintegrates into particles, as if heralding the many changes that came in 1989.

In 1988–1991, Sikora produces several works of art in which “his universe” is filled with hybrids and pseudomarks reflecting the chaos of Central Europe in its search of a new place on the world map. These reflections are later followed by his 1993 L’Arc de Triomphe (Bosnia, Bosnia!) in response to the Balkan conflict, and Half-Life (To the 70,000 Deported Fellow Citizens…), conceived as a tribute to the Jewish inhabitants of Slovakia and, more generally, as a warning against any genocide pleading the absolutes of an ideology. Sikora spent 1991–2006 working on three Malevich cycles dealing with art (and its influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century art), the fate and attitudes of the Russian suprematists who lived with, but were eventually devoured by the ideals of the Russian revolution. In the first part of the cycle, Malevich’s Grave, he quotes visual elements of classical modernism, in the second, called Grave for Malevich, he “argues” with Malevich whether he could have recognized the danger posed by the “Red Leader”, and in the third he ponders the freedom of the spirit. Eventually, he “absolves” Malevich, as if taking the burden of modernism upon himself (Forward! / Homage à…), while his Prison for Malevich gives him a new, free and endless space.

The exhibition is accompanied by a voluminous monograph featuring all periods of artist´s work. It includes texts by Jiří Valoch and Helena Musilová (both National Gallery in Prague) and Aurel Hrabušický (Slovak National Gallery Bratislava), biography of the artist and other materials.

Rudolf Sikora
Born April 17, 1946, Žilina, Slovensko
Lives in Bratislava, works in Bratislava, Košice and Prague
Painter, graphic artist, sculptor, photographer, teacher

Education:
College of Performing Arts in Bratislava, major in stage design (1963–1965, with L. Vychodil)
College of Fine Arts in Bratislava (1963–1969, with D. Milly, P. Matejka)

Entrance fee: Basic 80 CZK, Reduced 40 CZK, Family 120 CZK

Opening hours: daily except Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Contact for journalists: Marcela Hančilová, tel.: 224 301 167, 724 501 536, e-mail: hancilova@ngprague.cz