BIATEC. Celtic Mint

The exhibition was originally designed by curator Želmíra Grajciarová. It opened in 1998 on the first floor of Pálffy Palace following complete reconstruction of the building and its subsequent opening to the public under management of the Bratislava City Gallery.

The installation Totems comprises a series of five unique sculptures made of burnt books on concrete bases. Individual book titles are not recognisable, however, as in the process of burning they merged into a complete sculptural work that reflect wellknown geometric forms, for example Brancusi’s pedestal sculptures, and in terms of content is connected with social utopias in the tradition of artistic avant-gardes of futurism or constructivism. Authors who systematically analyse regimes of patriarchally constructed female representation work with books as symbols of literacy, a purportedly masculine and unquestionable sign of progress. From the books, which form majestic objects in a new vertical arrangement and suggest the fragility of burning, they created irrational, difficult to verbalise, totemic figures of the language of the sculptural work.

As part of their emancipatory efforts, period neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s experimented with breaking the boundaries of the surface or expanding the classical painting medium into intermedia environments in order to free themselves from the formal demands placed on traditional formats.

The exhibition represents a unique assembly of well-known and lesser-known works of conceptual and performance art. Thematically concentrated, while also including art works in considerable numbers, the curator’s selection stresses environmental motifs in art from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The body appropriately draws our attention as a two-way interface between the psychological and social aspects of our being. Its ambivalence, so attractive for the sphere of visual art, lies primarily in its functioning as a screen that either separates people from each other and emphasises their individuality, or, on the contrary, connects them; it thereby co-constitutes the intimate and social spheres of our immediate existence.