Stano Masár
In this place you would probably expect text describing my artistic program, headline works and representation in collections.
There is a text like this as well and I usually use it in cases to introduce myself. However, I´ve decided to publish an older text from year 2006, when Juraj Čarný, curator I collaborate with untill now, had opened my first solo show at the Space Gallery.
That time, he had written the text describing my artwork at the beginning of my carreer in kind of a "future vision" of me, after years passed, with my own museum. For me, it is a nice game with a time – even now, after several years, and I would like to share this with you.
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Dear visitors,
if I had the opportunity to welcome you to the Stano Masár Museum today, we would undoubtedly enter through the regularly opening and closing doors of an IKARUS city traffic bus. Just like it was at the exhibition at At Home gallery in Šamorín Synagogue. There could be no shortage of trash cans made from cigarette butts and tram chairs overturned like Duchamp's urinals. And maps of transport connections made from glued chewing gum wrappers, as was the case at the SPACE station during the METRO exhibition. Stairs, doors and other spatial details would not have to be any more real than in Masár's virtual reality. As it was in his exhibitions at Slovak National Gallery or Medium Gallery, reality would interweave with Masár's virtuality and we would have nothing left but to enjoy the absolute naturalness of the new museum. A museum that would be the only one in Slovakia to have a permanent collection of world art from Sandro Botticelli to Damien Hirst.
Of course, in Masár’s interpretation, it is not necessary to emphasize this when looking at today’s exposures. For the completeness of the information, it is worth mentioning that another edition of the presented work is located in the collections of Slovak National Gallery, that wisely decided to enrich its collection fund with works by such authors as Marcel Duchamp or Francis Bacon. Today’s premiere of the cycle Slovak Fine Art of the 20th century is therefore also a challenge to all enlightened collectors. And not to mention the delicacy of the most expensive works of art in history. The only problem therefore remains the absence of collectors not only at this exhibition but in the Slovak territory at all.
Another of the series of visitor confusion at Stano Masár’s museum would be exterior elements evoking /New/ roads /crossings, belts, etc./, arranged in naturally illogical and unusual structures dividing and delimiting space. The project that you have the opportunity to see today is not the first or only inventive project prepared for the spaces of our gallery. ENTRY TO THE SPACE ALLOWED, MIND THE ART, KEEP YOUR THOUGHTS CLEAN!, WHEN YOU MATURE, YOU WILL FALL OFF. We would be warned by tables on the walls. Navigation tables to escape exits /RUNAWAY/ would lead us to rules, fame, sex, money, freedom, love … . According to your choice.
Recently I caught myself completing Stano Masár’s projects. Certainly not because they were imperfect, unfinished, but precisely because of their provocatively open concept. To further creation, thinking and change. To modification, confrontation and interpretation. Similarly, reality sometimes modifies our ways of perception. The reality of the nearby intersection of Lermontovova and Moyzesova streets, where two years ago pedestrian crossings appeared starting on both sides of the sidewalk but never completed in the middle of the road. Although Lubomir Durcek denies authorship, I don’t quite believe him. The name I needed to get to in this text just came up, so I’m ending.
Thank you for visiting!
Juraj Čarný
SPACE Gallery, 8. 2. 2006