Marek Kvetan — Flashback

Marek Kvetan is a distinctive visual artist who works with different kinds of media and incorporates analytical thinking and post-conceptual tendencies. The core of his work domain focuses on ready made objects and prints.

His ideas are based on the visuals of contemporary culture and its attributes. He is no stranger to kitsch, period or even decadent aesthetics. Lately, he has been concentrating on 3D objects and installations which he manipulates in order to challenge them visually, demystify them and make them his own as ready mades. The main creative principle of the artist is the elevation/challenge of the marginalised/categorised which he uses to disrupt and build upon new aesthetic standards and stereotypes. The beauty of the post-conceptual paradoxes makes Marek Kvetan’s work extremely attractive for its recipients. He deconstructs functionally in order to create a new aesthetic/visual value with an exaggerated level of absurdity.

The Flashback piece, which is a part of the Nitra Gallery’s collection, is an installation that consists of fourteen 3D objects (various kinds of rear-view mirrors taken from different car models). Rear-view mirrors are supposed to help us control our vehicles and navigate through traffic. However, if we keep focusing on the rear view, we can put ourselves as well as other members of the traffic in danger. If the rear-view mirror is a metaphor, then Flashback (along with its fourteen little mirrors in motion) means we should not keep looking “back” for too long as it can affect our present. The mirrors create a wall, offering a rear view for the viewers. The accumulated objects merge something we know (are familiar with) with new (selected, separated, fragmentised) meanings.

The artist himself considers: “Flashback a flash of reality we are trying to get a hold of, but it is located in a different, parallel act of our present (…) There is no primary image anymore, just the storyline we keep building based on our experience and memories. This is how you create your second act, a parallel image.”

Kvetan’s language makes him a true contemporary artist whose work has grown beyond our local art scene and found its place among its Central European counterparts.