Matej Krén: Passage
Permanent exhibition in Pálffy Palace
The project "Passage" represents a kind of symbolic "shortcut across worlds" in which we exist or reside: from the factual, real world to the world of human culture, where reality is replaced by another reality – the virtual one – the reality of words, text, signs, symbols, and images, and then back again.
The project itself is a metaphorical synthesis of several formal-meaning elements: the entrance, the sidewalk, "endless walls" of books, mirrors, light, the exit, and even the physical presence of the viewers. Here, the viewers transform from merely "passive" observers into actors co-creating the symbolic and meaningful dimension of the artwork. Their physical presence is transformed into an image – "an image of pedestrians" walking through the passage, and at the same time "an image of pilgrims" walking along a narrow path through the "endless" space. These metaphorical transformations momentarily reveal the possibility of insight into this hidden, intangible, yet constantly omnipresent "world-occurrence."
Despite its essentially discreet presence, the passage becomes both an obstacle and simultaneously the only possibility for movement in the space of the gallery or the world, thus reflecting another aspect of this "occurrence" – the absence of other alternatives...
Matej Krén
