Réflexion du Château
Ivan Dudáš
1. 11. − 1. 1. 2025
Kurátori: Marianna Brindzová, Andrej Jaroš
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The conceptual axis of the project RÉFLEXION DU CHÂTEAU is based on the records of the transformation of the architecture of a historical monument. This monument is a national cultural heritage site, the extensive baroque Tovarníky Mansion, which belonged to the wealthy bourgeois Haupt-Stummer family, and where the artist's studio is located.
The source, inspiration, and input materials are based on photographs from the past and the current state. On the other hand, the "film frames" timeline is complemented by a fusion of reality and imagination. The result is a painting collection of possible and impossible, real and less portraits of architecture.
The series consists of unified formats installed as hanging paintings. Each painting is autonomous, but the overall installation offers the possibility of reading a diverse story of wealth, luxury, aristocracy, decline, emptiness, ideology, change of function, neglect, hope, and more.
AUTHORS WORD
I was interested in the deformations of architecture within the setting of a historic mansion. This led to a series of paintings based on windows, whose unevenly cast glass distortedly reflects the surrounding architecture.
Each window consisted of six panels, which together formed a whole – one painting. I focused on depicting both fragments and larger compositions, such as the façade.
I installed the completed paintings into the actual windows of the mansion, creating the effect of an optical illusion (trompe l’oeil).
Through this work, I wanted to explore the extension of painting, an intervention in public space, to test the possibilities of trompe l’oeil, and to gain new experience in the context of installation.
The exhibition Réflexion du Château presents a selection of Peter Decheť's years-long painting work, through which he explores space (both pictorial and real) and the random objects situated within it. He expresses and searches for the essence of these empty spaces and their relationship to himself. He depicts the patina layered by lived memories and the passage of time, which has left its mark on them.
Some of Peter Decheť's paintings refer to the vast spaces of a neglected national cultural monument and various objects emerging in rhythmic, grid-like arrangements, pointing to a peculiar order and uniformity of randomly created installations.
In his paintings, the artist meticulously maps and captures the surrounding spaces within his studio, which serves not only as a workplace or shelter from adverse weather but also as a mysterious space for discovering unknown corners, whether in the expansive attic of a mansard roof or the dark basement of vaulted cellars.
Decheť thus intensely highlights the features of this historical environment, striving to capture it through the melancholic presence filled with paradoxes of our consumer society and superficial times. He depicts absurd objects, such as the wreck of an Audi limousine belonging to the current owner of the château, who, after a horrific car accident, placed it as a commemorative artefact in the middle of the courtyard. Alongside construction materials like scaffolding pipes, a large, rusting satellite filled with water. In its reflective surface, Decheť romantically depicts the mirrored reflection of the opposite bastion.
He captures the unique atmosphere and genius loci frozen in time, in a post-capitalist apocalypse. In his figurative paintings, he alludes to past moments from the everyday life of the wealthy Továrnický family, who lived there until the end of World War II, when they had to emigrate to Austria due to the political situation, and the state confiscated their extensive property.
It is thus fascinating to observe how the artist attempts to grapple with these historical contexts and integrate them, consciously or subconsciously, into the framework of his work. The curatorial concept of the exhibition in the apartment gallery creates an illusory space of the artist’s studio, aided by the deliberate selection of works.
