Július Koller — Atlas of Fantastic Science (From the Július Koller Visual Archive)

Opening, March 29, 2011, 6.30 pm
Exhibition, March 30 – May 20, 2011

Július Koller’s work, which focused on day-to-day reality steeped in a public realm submitted to state oversight and control, was contrasted by the artist’s personal figure—a phenomenon in parallel appears in the work of conceptual artists in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and other former communist countries. In former Eastern Europe artists were often compelled to take on the ­position of art historians and archivists (Zdenka Badovinac), as many of them also authored programme texts and ­manifestos. Koller’s interest in day-to-day reality and public affairs immediately prompted him into collecting daily press, newspaper clippings and mass reproduced images. The product of his search for “unidentifiable objects” and the follow through in archiving them comprises a momentous complement to the documentation on his concepts and actions.

Július Koller (b. 1939 in Slovakia, † 2017).
www.juliuskollersociety.org

Curated by Christian Kravagna and Hedwig Saxenhuber.