Into the Nature of the Gallery?

The exhibition project Into the Nature of the Gallery? is a kind of a (post/humane) contemplation on the behaviour, status and perception of the individual (artist/man). The Nitra Gallery visitor will be confronted with traces (metaphors) of nature that have been brought into the gallery in the form of artistic artefacts. Into the Nature of the Gallery? is a project that is sometimes subtly romantic, but also critical. It is about man’s connection to nature, but also about his disconnecting (from her). The exhibition halls can be perceived as space where visitors can observe other people’s short stories made of art. 

Even thought we behave like barbarians to nature, sometimes we wake up – we try to respond to her, interact with her. In our occasional humility, we need to communicate with her through art as well. This peculiar curatorial selection is not about currently pressing environmental matters/the position of man/artist. It is yet another open dialogue about our land/nature and artists. The goal of the exhibition is not to answer the difficult egoistic and ecological questions, but rather to try and help us find harmony within ourselves. Harmony between nature and culture. It might be just a subtle attempt to try and answer the elemental question of what it means to be human nowadays.

From the genre of modern landscape depictions through conceptual art tendencies to presentations exploring the future of mankind and all the possibilities offered by the combination of technologies and nature, they all present a post-human image of man’s fallibility. 

Man is not the centre of the universe – a post-human is man that is imperfect, incompatible with himself, aware of broadening his horizons thanks to electronic technologies. A sensitive visitor can sometimes feel neurotic anxiety from the future, but, at the same time, remind themselves nostalgically of their lusting desire for goodness, immortality and uniqueness. 

The current situation tests our own egoism – it tests the limits of our own physical and psychological immunity. During this period, when most of us are experiencing a genuine deficiency for the first time in our lives (whether it is a physical, phycological, emotional or material one), we learn new things about ourselves as well. We learn the world has somehow gone crazy and as we are a part of it, so have we. Once again, we are reminded we are all just naive dreamers, convinced of our egocentricity, living in our own little bubbles of illusions and fantasies. Life on earth as we know it is supplemented with our little miscellaneous social bubbles that keep hitting each other, bursting, perishing, leaving space for new ones. We think we are at their centre, while nature, that we are a part of, just keeps observing, getting the short end of the stick as she does not fight human egoism, that is beneath her as she knows she is the one who will always have the final word about man’s fate. We like to brake her, win over her and be proud of it, but she is independent, which is also why man likes going to her, he is attracted to her independence of him.