The Relationship between the Home and the World
Exposition in GJK in the period June 2020 - October 2024
The installation of a new long-term exhibition unit in the Ján Kulich Gallery is a retrospective exhibition of the sculptor Ján Kulich, organized on the occasion of his jubilee - the late nineties. It offers visitors a cross-section of his life's work - from the oldest preserved wooden statues of his early youth to top works of Slovak fine art in the field of chamber, medal, portrait and monumental sculpture.
Detail
EXPOSITION PERIOD
June 2020 - October 2024
NUMBER OF EXHIBITED WORKS
90 sculptures, 27 medals, 25 reliefs, 54 drawings
The exhibition entitled "The Home – World Relationship" presents a selection from the lifelong work of Ján Kulich, which builds on the national-historical legacy and taps into various layers of world and Slovak culture through portraits of personalities and the symbolism of folk culture.
The exhibition documents various periods of his work through sketches, medals, reliefs, portraits, figural compositions, processed in wood, stone, welded iron, bronze and hydronalium. A selection of 153 works by Ján Kulich from a lifelong creative period from 1935 to 2013 has been installed on an area of 300 m2 in form of longterm exhibition.
Large wall panels with infographics, photographs and accompanying texts comprehensibly document the timeline with important milestones of the author's work and personal life as well as the development of his brilliant sculpture.
The aim is to acquaint the general cultural public with the work of one of the most important representatives of Slovak sculpture - with a work that affects Slovakia essentially and which rightfullly strengthens our national pride.
" Ján Kulich clearly underlined the inseparability of home and the world and presents a fundamental contribution to the integration of our art into the European context. This is certainly the case also because he understood that in modern civilization, which provides countless stimuli for the artististic work, the man is the most important."
" With his stylistic concept, Kulich is included in the world current of the genre epic medal and plaque, which is currently represented in various national cultures by only a few artists."
" It is remarkable that Kulich's plaques are conceived as absolutely modern in their content and shape so that they not only have a narrowly representative function but can also serve a decorative purpose in today's interior architecture."
" In the case of Ján Kulich's artistic journey, there were not only years of appreciation and understanding but also frequent moments of oblivion and deliberate disregard of the sculptor's work. These were the moments when the naysayers and epigones claimed that time had cast his work into the shadow while they pushed their work and pseudo-experiments to the public to be sold - in the words of Vlado Mináč - as their own brilliant discoveries. However, time is merciful because it enables us to forget about the creations that need to be forgotten and substantiates those works of art that we ought to live with. To those belong the works of Ján Kulich which express the truth of our nation. Time thus authenticates those who breathe life into their art. It favours those who have understood man historically, contemporarily, in his full human value."
