Matej Gavula: Corner in Focus - exhibition at Gallery Viper

Galerie VI cordially invites you to the opening of the exhibition by Slovak artist Matej Gavula, curated by Daniel Grúň. The guest of the exhibition is Ján Gašparovič.

Corner, nook, place of shame, from the opposite perspective again the corner of the streets. But it could also be a womb, a groin. These are just a few spontaneous associations, but the essence of all is that in the corner, movement occurs, and at the same time, peace resides within it, rests upon it, or serves as a means of delineation. The corner is a place where concealment happens, if the walls serve as a boundary, through which one cannot see. 

Corner in Focus presents an open, expanding center. A center where the movement of becoming a sculpture enters and exits, the movement of haptic acquisition of form and shape. From this center, which is always the same and yet different, improbable volumes are suspended, overlapping, undulating, layering. Movement seemingly emanates from the center; it is organized around this center. It is the center of the corner, around which the world rotates with our thoughts dedicated to art. The exhibition thus tematizes and examines the position of stonemasonry in the digital age.

The abrasive activity of grinding and smoothing stone is accompanied by sound vibrations. In collaboration with guest Ján Gašparovič, a sound installation has been created for the exhibition that materializes the stereophonic sound of grinding in the gallery space. The use of digital sound recording directly from the surface of the object, through the technology of geophones, allows for the transmission of vibrations from the mass of the stone.

Matej Gavula (*1972, Bratislava) is a visual artist based in Bratislava. He graduated in stonemasonry from the Secondary School of Art and later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in the Glass Studio. He works in the media of sculpture and object, photography, video, and performance. In recent years, he has presented his work at exhibitions such as Exploding Star (with Ján Gašparovič), New Synagogue Žilina (curator Daniel Grúň, 2023); Promenade, Kunsthalle Bratislava (curator Lýdia Pribišová, 2021–2022); House of Rituals, Tabačka Gallery, Košice (curator Samuel Velebný, 2021); Homo Faber, Július Koller Society, Bratislava (curator Daniel Grúň, 2020); Given: Park, Fountain, Eastern Slovak Gallery, Košice (curator Peter Tajkov, 2020); Abrasive Society, transit.sk, Bratislava (curator Judit Angel, 2019); Shock, HotDock Project Space, Bratislava (2019); Lost Form/Blind Mould, SODA gallery, Bratislava (2018); Constantly Growing Horizontal Underground Stems – Geopoetics in the Age of Anthropocene, Gallery Plusmínusnula, Žilina (2017); further I Like Attention, Central Slovak Gallery in Banská Bystrica (curator Zuzana L. Majlingová, 2018); Pretty Soon If This Keeps Up I'm Going to Have to Envelop the Entire Universe, Gdańsk City Gallery (curators Piotr Stasiowski and Jaro Varga, 2018); Panfília, Zahorian & Van Espen, Bratislava (curator Daniel Grúň, 2016); or Shell Game, MeetFactory, Prague (curators Lucia Gavulová and Jaro Varga, 2017).