NBS Gallery: Katarína Balúnová & Šimon Kučera – Parallel Utopia

Gallery of the National Bank of Slovakia (headquarters building at Imricha Karvaša 1 street in Bratislava)

At the Parallel Utopia exhibition in Andrej Jaroš's curatorial concept, two models of abstract art coexist. Abstraction is incomprehensible in its entity, but paradoxically the visual art, and especially classical painting, can materialize it in its various shades, not only in color but also in formal rendering. But what unites them all is that they can coexist.

Šimon Kučera (* 1996, a recent graduate of the AFAD) focuses in his work primarily on the synthesis of colored surfaces into virtual, asymmetrical structures, a kind of convex and concavely folded grids, which communicate with each other and create an intuitive pattern of the color palette. The presented series of images called "Composition Point" is based on a digital template, which it uses to process image themes. He creates them thanks to the "airbrush" technology, which is also a kind of attribute in his work.

The second of the presented couple of artists, Katarína Balúnová (* 1982, a graduate of the Art Academy in Banská Bystrica), also works with abstract forms. But in her latest works, there is already an inclination towards more figural compositions, moreover conceived in the intentions of neosymbolism. The exhibited series of works "Retroutopia" deals with the idea of ​​utopia - the search for an ideal place / utopian-imaginary city in the past and at the same time in the future. The set of images, installations and videos is based on the visuality of geometric language, which can be considered as an approach to the ideal of a perfect city, which does not even exist. In her works, the author consciously and systematically works with iconographic symbols from the urban environment, while creating her own utopian world.