The opening will take place on Tuesday 23 June at 5 p.m.

This solo exhibition in Ostrava by the Slovak artist Matúš Maťátko (1984) presents a current collection of paintings, reliefs and graphic pieces from the most recent period in his career, as well as a visual installation of iconic images and stories. It is a programmatic construction of an encyclopedic picture-gallery, recording historical events and crises that marked turning-points in Czech and Slovak history. The scene features not only densely stylized heroes and idols, but also signs, symbols and contemporary anti-heroes.

Maťátko adeptly models historic moments from the creation of the joint Czech and Slovak state – a heraldic lion suffocating the Habsburg eagle (Viribus Unitas – With United Forces), depicts the raised submachine-gun of an insurrectionary rebel below the Slovak mountain of Kriváň (A Bonfire Burns in the Mountains), or presents the iconic “V” gesture of victory from Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, but with severed fingers (We Promised Each Other Love).

In his reliefs, paintings and sculptures, Maťátko favours graphic stylization with strong outlines and references drawn from comics, street art, urban subcultures and the like. In this collection he demonstrates his active, critical approach to the pressing cultural and political issues of our history as well as our tragi-comic present in a time of rapid change, which he is able to translate into an attractive and somewhat provocative visual language.

This exhibition is dedicated mainly to the shared history of our two fraternally linked nations (hence the exhibition’s title), and it represents a loose continuation from a series of exhibitions entitled The White-Blue-Red Epic (2024 – Trnava; 2020 – Liptovský Mikuláš; 2019 – Bratislava).

b.skid

Curator: Vladimír Beskid
Text: Vladimír Beskid
Translation: Christopher Hopkinson
Graphic design: Katarína Jamrišková
Promotion: Jana Malášek Šrubařová, Magdaléna Staňková