Soft Opening Day
Stano Filko
A Retrospective

Filko was an important representative of the central European neo-avant-gardes, with an oeuvre that developed over many decades and remains remarkably contemporary. He had great success in the 1960s but then became a persona non grata after the Prague Spring was defeated, and after several years he fled the country in daredevil manner in a Škoda 120L, which he then painted white and presented at the center of his participation in Documenta 7. Thereafter Filko emigrated to New York. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain he returned to Bratislava and established the studio building Snesčenkova in the style of a ​“total work of art” whose rooms and artworks all adhered in color and size to a prearranged structure called System SF.

This exhibition includes selected works from all the artist’s creative periods in order to draw attention from the systematic overview to individual works and their points of reference to each other. Alongside rooms focusing on specific themes or periods, the large exhibition hall in particular serves the purpose of presenting works from different phases together in loose and yet intensive arrangements, so as to see the autonomy and dynamics of each single work within a process of free association with the others. The distinctions between variously evaluated and studied different periods (the early phase that was recognized within a history of art, the neo-expressive ​“American” phase, and the self-reflective late phase) is here replaced by an overview and recognition of one entire artistic position.

Installations that show the artist’s enthusiasm for space travel and the exploration of outer space are planned for the exterior areas around the museum. The large-scale sculptures The Pyramid (1995) and DSUQ 4.D. Rocket (2000) will be displayed on the museum’s flat roof, each of them key artistic statements that combine the cosmos and the world. For the exhibition opening and finissage large balloon works (Breathing – The Celebration of Air, 1970; 12 Colors of Reality (Balloons), 1978 – 2011) will be presented in the surrounding Graz City Park.

Filko’s oeuvre is telling in particular because individual works often refute any kind of system. Unlike a classical retrospective, this exhibition tries not to present the oeuvre in a traditional manner, but to show it in the form of a first attempt at an overview that also activates single works, so as to emphasize the topicality and visionary in Filko today.

This project is accompanied by a program of events and education and a publication, with the participation of Lucia Gregorová Stach, Patricia Grzonka, Christian Höller, Mira Keratová, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Boris Ondreička, Jan Verwoert/​Søren Grammel, and others.

Free admission