Oskár Čepan Award 2014 – Martin Kochan
“In the beginning of my art work I was devoted to political art in public space; I was inspired mostly by the work of action artists of the so called Eastern Bloc. I was thinking about art first and foremost as a set of aesthetical, political and social points of view and individual outputs. Since 2010 I have actively collaborated with the artist Cyril Blažo, later I have started to collaborate with Tomáš Beňadik and a few non-artists. Humor and banality are important dimensions of my works; I combine them in a peculiar way and encode them into new contexts. On one hand, it is an honest analytical conceptual work, on the other hand, it is an unfocused ‘freestyle’ hybrid process of creation with a multitude of outputs encompassing even the field of social media and Internet and oscillating between monumental and momental. My work can’t be considered today to be one, self-consistent sign – ‘logos.’
I strive rather for the communication in its broadest meaning by virtue of my own, more hybrid language and across media.”
Martin Kochan (born 1981, Trnava, SK) is a graduate of the Faculty of Education, Trnava University and the Studio of Figurative Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts VUT in Brno under the supervision of doc. Michal Gabriel, academic sculptor. He is a sculptor, activist, performer, photographer, sportsman and a fan of healthy diet. He lives and works in Trnava.
- Oskar Cepan Award 201400:00:04.012
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- I wasn´t happy to return to blocks of flats, because00:00:12.987
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- I had to look out on the architecture of panel houses00:00:15.146
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- from my child´s room, there was no field.00:00:20.554
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- It was like oppressing an individual in the block of flats,00:00:26.879
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- something like a slap.00:00:33.486
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- I didn´t cleared snow away from the pathway, I cleared it off the path.00:00:39.552
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- I repeated this artwork with snow glued on the panel ,00:00:46.869
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- on the first floor - it referred to previous artwork Anti-monument,00:00:52.441
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- where I started my personal Arabic Spring and opened myself00:00:58.602
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- to critical reflections on the space where I live.00:01:03.414
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- There was contemplation on the lamp - it does not have to be00:01:18.071
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- functional, it can be also beautiful, it can refer to certain shape.00:01:21.194
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- I chose the shape of the Statue of Liberty.00:01:24.713
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- At the same time it is the theme of global conflicts, crisis, revolution00:01:27.618
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- and strikes - what was on the rise and what was on the decline00:01:33.834
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- after 1989 - human rights or rather more waste and containers.00:01:40.513
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- More rubbish taken out, it is one of the planes of reflections.00:01:46.480
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- Free artwork is related to its opposite - my preparation,00:02:02.895
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- reading and studying - I put the pieces together to have a complete picture.00:02:13.293
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- In this case there are freestyle intervention into the public space00:02:21.555
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- using more informal and amusing language, which works better00:02:28.151
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- with the theme of anti-monumentality.00:02:40.208
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- We can say it is like Freudian pulling out the processes from subconsciousness.00:02:43.196
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- The processes and actions need not to tell the whole problem, but later00:02:52.877
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- on the exhibition it might be put together in various contexts by curator.00:02:58.945
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- Lastly we looked into the shop window with Christian statues, various00:03:03.762
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- liturgical motives - it was quite funny, I felt like in a gallery.00:03:16.327
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- Letter by letter I lit up the notice board.00:03:32.989
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- The local authorities took a fancy to restore this notice board.00:03:37.008
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- And it is functioning up to now.00:03:42.790
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- The public space is not a domain of an artist, it is rather sphere00:03:46.833
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- of advertising, free non-regulated market and business,00:03:55.543
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- Svejkian game playing the business and taking an advantage of handicaps00:04:03.548
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- of the public space - this is part of my artwork.00:04:09.230
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- On one hand my work is strictly analytical and conceptual,00:04:13.102
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- on other hand it is open, free styled and informal - it is not one form and shape.00:04:18.298
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- On the contrary it is broken and bastardized.00:04:29.534
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- My view on visual art is on the level of searching for the truth,00:04:33.771
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- it refers to sciences rather than to any market rules.00:04:43.018
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- Ok, that is enough, right?00:04:53.330