ARTIST PROFILE
- Slovakia (b. 1979 in Levice)
- Currently in Jílové u Prahy, Czech Republic.
- Martin Papcun explores private relationships with public spaces and the spaces we inhabit, in works both monumental and miniature. His work is focused on relationships, definitions of private and public space, and the gaps between them.
CONTACT & LINKS
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Euclid Ave. Cleveland/ USA | 2009
Euclid avenue___ This project refers to the time of industrial crisis during the 1970s which, in the US, hit Cleveland possibly the hardest. Thousands of deserted homes were boarded up to protect them from incursions The installation chiefly mirrors the hopeless feeling of these abandoned streets, these contemporary ghost towns. The project also traces the influence of global corporations on the general tastes of the society: how even a children’s toy, made to look like an ideal house, might influence the general aesthetic attitudes of a society toward architecture and urbanism in their real contexts. In a wider sense, the project defines this space as a contested realm where developers, business and financial lobbyists both feed, and feed like parasites on, the tastes of younger generations. To an extent, the artist perceived an invisible social control to be rendered visible in domestic architecture, both at the real scale of American cities and, conversely, children’s toys. Who determines what kind of aesthetic forms we engage with in our daily life, and who defines what our children play with? Who controls the germinal society that will soon yield new clients for the real estate market? These are some of the questions that the installation evokes. The project was exhibited as part of the show ‘Hyper-Na- ture’ at the Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, 2009 and it was also published in the catalogue World Artists Program / 24 / Martin Papcún, by Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, 2009.