The premiere exhibition project of the Gallery of Spiš Artists presents the work of an artist with an emphasis on the issue of transit nodal points. Stopping movement in painting as a space for the question of where we come from and where we are going. The exhibition from the Profiles series is part of the U-POINTS project and is implemented thanks to support from public resources of the Art Support Fund.

 

"Modern nomads trapped in waiting rooms and airport halls ..."

 

Marek Jarott's main focus is on urbanism and architecture, and he is interested in public spaces, often stations or waiting rooms, as well as airport halls and underground metro corridors. These specific spaces are characterized by static anchorage in the flow of intangible time and material volume of bodies. These are transit spaces, which are just connected by the energy of movement in contrast to the unchanging existence of individual purposeful elements of civic amenities. For the artist, the representation of the selected theme is symbolic - he asks where we come from and where we are going. Jarotta is attracted by architecture that is out of interest. The interiors of buildings marked by functionalism look cold and alienated, they represent spaces that serve their purpose, nothing more and nothing less. These spaces are similar to each other and that is why they seem familiar to us. In his first works, the author was content without any figure - he depicted emptied spaces as an insight outside the hours of operation. The locking of the walls without windows evoked a feeling of loneliness enhanced with the monochrome tuning of the works. Gradually, people enter the artist's artistic expression as anonymous silhouettes without faces and individuality. They are modern nomads on the way to an imaginary goal, and their real meaning is just the way. Like the figures in Edward Hopper's paintings, they are ingrown, and exist in completely different worlds even when they stand side by side. The interiors of the modernist waiting rooms are gradually replacing megalomaniacal airport halls and stations, which, with the inclusion of restaurants and shops, form a city in the city. The author goes from colourless to colour in views through large-area glasses, where imaginary light refracts through the prism of uncertain tomorrows.

 

AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY

Marek Jarotta is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Painting Studio of Assoc. Prof. Klaudia Kosziba. He has presented himself at several solo and group exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad (Italy). His creative work has repeatedly attracted attention at the VUB Foundation's Painting of the Year competition. In r. 2013 he won the 2nd place, in 2016, 2017 and 2020 he was a finalist. The artist lives and works in Bratislava and Ružomberok.

 

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Curator: Mgr. art. Katarína Balúnová, ArtD. - GUS

Production: Mgr. Lenka Králová - GUS

Graphic design: Mgr. art. Ivana Babejová, ArtD. - GUS