OLOMOUC WILL MOMENTARILY BECOME THE CENTRE OF CENTRAL EUROPEAN ART
Forty contemporary artists, architects and designers from Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Czech Republic will present their work at the Central European Art Show SEFO Triennial 2024 from 27 June 2024 at the Olomouc Museum of Art. The main idea and title of the main exhibition is MOMENTS, which are the key moments of our past, present and future. They are reflected in MONUMENTS – monuments and memorials as carriers of symbols, documents and archives as tools for exploring history. Balancing on the edge of reality and fiction, MOCKUMENTS then serve as a method of creative reflection on these values.
The dominant element of the main exhibition space of the Museum of Modern Art is a nine-metre high “plague” column created by Slovak artist Marek Kvetan in response to the 19. Ala Savashevich, a Belarusian artist living in exile in Wroclaw, is exhibiting a monumental figurative sculpture that reflects monuments to dictators, not only Belarusian or Russian ones. And Austrian Andreas Fogarasi, for example, will show his assemblages made from materials found in currently endangered modern architecture buildings in Olomouc.
The Triennial will also show for the first time the fruits of the developing cooperation with the German Kunstmuseum Bochum. The permanent exhibition of modern and contemporary art Century of Relativity will undergo a renewal – some works by Josef Albers, Wladyslaw Strzeminski, Endre Nemes and Joseph Beuys will be added. One of the most valuable works from the Olomouc collection, Flower of Sleep (1931) by the Czech painter Toyen, will be complemented by her work On the Edge (1945), also brought from Bochum. A separate exhibition and two film documentaries are dedicated to the curator Peter Spielmann, who has collected many exceptional works by Central European artists in Bochum.
The show also reaches the Archdiocesan Museum with its exhibitions of old art. The new exhibition Fire Dramas will present fireworks and firework illuminations in European art as ephemeral monuments of the past.
The Triennial is not enclosed by walls; it also enters the public space, where large-scale objects and installations have appeared. For example, the Upper Square near the Town Hall has been taken over by large metal sculptures by Slovak artist Ilona Németh, reminiscent of the DIY products that have accompanied our everyday life from the times of socialism to the present day. In front of the Theoretical Institutes on the grounds of the Olomouc University Hospital, the Luddites Automation building by the Hungarian duo Randmroutines was erected. The SEFO fence adjacent to the Museum of Art will host from mid-summer the Ukrainian group EtchingRoom1, which artistically processes the shocking data on the loss of heritage assets during the ongoing war conflict.
The opening of the SEFO 2024 Triennial will be preceded by an introductory programme at the University Hospital on 27 June 2024 at 14.00 and will gradually move to other locations in the city towards the museum. The opening ceremony with a performance by Austrian and Ukrainian artists will take place at 6.30 pm at CENTRAL, from where it will move to the Archdiocesan Museum at 8.30 pm. The programme will end at 22.00 with a Baroque fireworks display and dance performance in the local Courtyard of Honour.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)