Matej Gavula a Jonáš Gruska – Man Has Emerged Triumphant: Jan Medlen's Arena
This exhibition explores oil extraction in the Záhorie region.
tranzit.sk
Beskydská 12, Bratislava
Opening is accompanied by a concert by Medlen jr.
We are in the seemingly desolate environment of “donkeys” in the oil fields scattered among the pine forests around Malacky. They dynamically pump oil and create a kind of imaginary “pulse” of fossil extractivism characteristic of the current economic system. Their gradual decomposition and rusting offer a picture of a world where fossil resources cease to play their previous role.
Before the donkeys, there was Ján Medlen, a homo faber from Gbely. He didn’t like corners and nooks where, according to him, negative energy is concentrated. He preferred circles and bubbles, organic and flowing, boundless. That is how he became an architect. He exchanged fertile soil for wetlands, which are in motion like an element. He discovered gas leaking from the ground and was not afraid to work with it. Underneath it lay the oil which the state seized and began to use to fuel the machinery of war.
This exhibition entitled Man Has Emerged Triumphant explores oil extraction in the Záhorie region, the history and possible future of a society built on extraction, and a creative and curious man who worked with the essence from the bowels of the earth. Sound plays a central role. Archival photographs and video footage of explosions reveal an invisible landscape — one that continues to ferment beneath the surface and seep into the present.
Text: Matej Gavula and Jonáš Gruska