ARTIST STATEMENT

Statement:

My work can hardly be characterized as linear, homogeneous work with precise or rigorous  style and content specification.  Quite the contrary. I really enjoy to use  a wide range of medias and even though I consider myself primarily as a painter, some projects are build on other medias. Thus the Work moves from classical painting through experiments with painting, photography, object, video, happening. It has never been  my goal to create an autonomous and distinctive style that would immediately be  associated with me. Art is a form of freedom, so I find it restrictive  to devote my artistic ambitions to one form or one topic. I try to subordinate the use of medias with intention to find the clearest and possible best expression for the content or idea.
My work should be seen as questions, which I deal with myself in monologue, as in dialogue pointed well to the viewer. Questions that may be considered subversive and critical comments towards contemporary society accompanied by latent irony. An important motive of my work is doubt, doubt on prevailing stereotypes in society, subversively undermining doubt on themes such as freedom, revolution, capitalism, post imperialism, church, ideology or the doubt over myself as well.  My work is the " picture of shifts, gaps and errors in the communication of the world today."

Description:

1.     Máš na Čepana?,/ untranslatable/, 21 x 29,7 cm, xerox , 10 x 15cm photograph, 2014/

An official record of the District Police Department, Bratislava 1, documents and reinterprets the event, which took place in the evening after the Oskar Čepan´s Award ceremony 2013. Photo records  results.

2. Why? Because!, 15 x 10 cm, photography, 2013/

Spontaneous, site-specific intervention happened during installation of prof. Daniel Fischer´s work in the Šamorín synagogue / At Home Gallery /. In prayer position, by using the element of Fischer´s work, I ask God for the primary philosophical / existential / question: "Why?". God responds me with imperative and cynical heaven -sent "Because!" in the form of a word carved into Fischer´s plexiglas and negates my effort to understand. The photography seems pathetic, theatrical and awkward, whereby it illustrates the hidden sarcasm of the event. Photo made by prof. Daniel Fischer.

4. Everything, /ongoing  series/  140 x 100 cm each, oil on canvas, 2014.

A series of images titled Everything is motivated by the ambition to find artistic responses to the absurd question: how to paint Everything? On an area of one image, without the need to illustrate each element of reality in realistic manner. Solution for this universalist question required the use of abstraction, reduction of the perceived reality and effort to find a common unifying principle that links the human sensory system to the outside world. The solution is hidden in electromagnetic waves, in other words in the visible light, which is for us the only possible source of seeing. The impact of light on the optic nerve in our eye allows us to see and distinguish particulars of the reality . Man is only able to perceive the light spectrum. Visible light is the maximum of the optical perceptual system in humans. Thus it becomes Everything. This fact allowed me to semantically rename colour range of the light spectrum / from red to purple, from 380 nm to 780 nm, the way how the light spectrum is displayed in physics/ to Everything! Submitted works represent the first formal and contentual experiments and they have character of studies. The series thematizes the question of human knowledge and perception, and despite the initial stage of the project it will provide me with a wide range of formal and contentual examination.

5. Metanoia /ongoing series/, dimensions variable,mixed media on canvas, 2013

A series of images is an attempt to rewrite the nowadays visuality into the visual language of the former ideological regimes. An attempt to transcribe today's capitalist visuality; silently encoding ideological value systems, into visual language of the former social realism, Nazi propaganda, or into languages of other ideological systems, which I wanted to equalize in relation to present "invisible" ideology. To put them on a same level, to reveal invisible "lens of ideology" and express its constant presence at any time and in any social organization. The first studies are based upon apropriated photos of Paris Hilton, which are a perfect example of the capitalist hyperbolism. Paris Hilton uses her selfportraits as a instrument of selfpromotion and adds  neoliberal statements and manifests to them, the decision to choose her as a motive for the first serie has  lightened my research . But during the work, the problem of the visual transcription, turned out to be very difficult one, so I consider the series for open and  intend to return in a different strategy later.

6. Claude Money, 50 x 18 x 4 cm, framed inkjet print on canvas, 2011

Claude Money is a semantic joke which manipulates reality by renaming of Claude Monet´s signature and at the same time a ironical comment toward the Art market.

7.   La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi, 205 x 305 x 50 cm, trivision billboard, photographic foils, 2010

A three-phase rotational billboard shows two photographs of my former elementary-school class, taken over the course of the years 1989 – 1990. The first photo depicts us in pioneer uniforms, the second one already in „western“ outfits with logos, Disney pictures, etc. The third plane of the billboard is covered with an aluminium reflective foil, mirroring the environment, the gallery, the viewers. La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi is a commentary on the revolution years 1989-1990. It demystifies the revolution and  pictures it as a formal change or a linquisticall turnaround. Its protagonists remain the same and the change occurs on the surface only. A rotational billboard is a medium of advertisements, its function is to spread the myths of capitalism and democracy and even thought the myth of a society freed from the traces of communism or any kind of ideology. Revolution is a reference point, which defines and forms the new society, and thus becomes a myth.

8. Lebensraum /ongoing series,  90 x 65 cm each, oil on canvas, 2009 /

Lebensraum depicts human heads wrapped in unbreathable atmosphere of plastic bags from multinational and local companies, state institutions, museums etc. It is an expression of existential feeling and reflection about the present and its ambition is to polemize with the discourse of free and open society, which is rather defined by supply and demand and reduces us into products, suggests thinking and aims. The current society creates myths, produces hyperreality, in which existence becomes imitation. Despite the formal simplicity Lebensraum hides a range of codes refering to terrorism, racism, church, Foucault's docile body, agony, ecology, climate change, sexual practices, le petit mort,  etc

9. Erstereich 20 x 14 x 0,2 cm, inkjet print on cut out perspex, 2009 / ed. 6./

Through  acquisition of the banking houses operating in the former East-bloc, Austrian Erste Bank und Sparkasse in the last decade, morphologically follows the borders of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Maps of the old monarchy and the current Erstereich are almost identical. Object in the form of geographical maquette commentates that fact.

BIOGRAPHY

Marcel Mališ

Jiskrová 5/ 3, 83104 Bratislava, Slovenská republika

27. 08. 1978, Bratislava

00421 905 909 844

malismarcel@gmail.com

 

Samostatné výstavy/ solo shows:

2016 Arbeit Jeder Art, Atelier XIII, Bratislava, Slovakia

2014 Minimálne všetko, flatgallery, Bratislava, Slovenská republika

2013 Life is beautiful, Čin Čin gallery, Bratislava, Slovenská republika

2011 Tomáš Mališ Marcel Werner,  fru fru gallery, Bratislava, Slovenská republika

2010 Jackpot, gallery 19, Bratislava, Slovenská republika /kurátor M. Mudroch/

2009 Eastern promises, TIC galéria, Brno, Česká republika /kurátorka B. Jablonská, M. Kupková/

2007 In case of ... , Galéria m++, Bratislava, Slovenská republika /kurátorka Karmen Koutná/

 

Skupinové výstavy /výber/, group shows /selection/

2015

skulptur lab, maso- objekt, 4D gallery, galanta, slovakia

pure energy, electric power plant, piešťany, slovakia, /curated by a. jaroš/

3.rd danube biennale, danubiana, meulensteen art museum, ćunovo, slovakia /curated by k. jarošová/

biennial of small scale sculpture pezinok, statua gallery, pálffy palace, bratislava, slovakia /curated by r. popelár, with catalogue/

 

2014

 Mundus vadit retro, Kibla portal, Maribor, Slovinsko, / kurátor Aleksandra Kostič and Žiga Dobnikar/                

 Skulptur Lab, Pisztoryho palác, Bratislava, Slovenská republika /kurátor by Z. Sabova, L.Sabo/

2013

 Transcending cultures, Essl museum, Klosterneuburg bei Wien, Austria /kurátor by Johanna Langfelder-hain, Viktoria Tomek,/

La belle peinture II, Pisztoryho palác, Bratislava, Slovenská republika /Kurátor  I. Jančar, E. Hober/

Essl Art Award cee exhibition, Galéria Médium, Bratislava, Slovenská republika /kurátor Z. Rusinová/

2012

Oltáre sučasnosti, Turčianská galéria, Martin, Slovak republic /kurátor  L. Miklošková, /

2011

Spaceship Jugoslavia, NGBK, Berlin, Germany / kurátor A. Šurkić, A. Kulašić, A. Mujkanović, D. Marković, J. Komnenić, K. Sudec, N. Hennig, with catalogue/

" a work that can´t shake off what it reflects", WUK - Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Austria / kurátor  P. Dimitrova, L. Dokuzović, E. Freudmann, C. Gülcü, I. Jurica/

Biennale d´arte contemporanea, Villa Croce, Genova, Italy

" a work that can´t shake off what it reflects ", Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck, Austria / kurátor by P. Dimitrova, L. Dokuzović, E. Freudmann, C. Gülcü, I. Jurica/

2010

Was and will be, Fru Fru Gallery, Bratislava, Slovenská republika / kurátor by M. Kopták/

Maľba po maľbe, Slovenská národná galéria, Bratislava, Slovenská republika /kurátor by A. Kusá/

 Maľba 2010, Nadácia VUB, Slovenská národná galéria, Bratislava, Slovenská republika

JCE- Contemporary Art Biennial, Galerie Im Traklhaus, Salzburg, Austria / kurátor B. Jablonská/

Der Drang nach Osten, Hit gallery, Bratislava, Slovak republic, / kurátor by Ivan Jurica, /

 Jeune Création Europpéenne, Biennial for contemporary art, Pécs, Hungary/ kurátor by B. Jablonská /

Mladá Slovenská maľba, Galéria mesta Bratislavy, Slovenská republika/ kurátor Zsófia Kiss-Szemán/

Jeune Création Europpéenne, Biennial for contemporary art,Galéria mesta Bratislavy, Slovenská republika/ kurátor B. Jablonská/

1.st Danube Biennale, Danubiana, Muelensteen art Museum, Slovenská republika

 Pasce vizuálnej ilúzie, Nitrianská galéria, Nitra, Slovenská republika / kurátor by B. Geržová/

• Ceny, Awards:

 

2013 Laureát, ESSL Art Award CEE, Slovenská republika

2011 finalista, Maľba 2011, foundation VÚB, Slovenská republika

2010 finalista, Maľba 2010,foundation VÚB, Slovenská republika

2010 finalista, Strabag Art award, Rakúsko

2009 finalista, Henkel Art award, Slovenská republika

2009 finalista, Maľba 2009, foundation VÚB, Slovenská republika

 

• Koncepcie výstav, exhibition conceptions

2009 Eastern promises, TIC galéria, Brno, Czech Republic

Zbierky, Collections

Collection of the Auction House SOGA

Collection Zuzana, Slovak republic

Collection Marek, Czech republic

Meulensteen Art Collection, Netherlands

Bratislava City Gallery Collection , Slovak republic

• Vzdelanie, education:

 

2009-2013 Doktorandské štúdium, Vysoká škola výtvarných umení, Bratislava, Výtvarné umenie, Maľba iné médiá, Studio +- XXI. Century, prof. Daniel Fischer

2005 - 2007  Magisterské štúdium,  Vysoká škola výtvarných umení, Bratislava, Výtvarné umenie, Maľba iné médiá, Studio +- XXI. Century, prof. Daniel Fischer

2001 - 2005 Bakalárske štúdium, Vysoká škola výtvarných umení, Bratislava, Výtvarné umenie, Maľba iné médiá, Studio +- XXI. Century, prof. Daniel Fischer