Archive of exhibitions

This travelling exhibition maps the Danube Region of the 17th and 18th century through both detailed and contextual maps of the territories around the river Danube, from its source to its mouth, of its tributaries, ground plans of towns or fortresses, or plans of battles. The exhibition has been presented at several places in Germany, Romania, Hungary and after Bratislava it will be moved to Austria.

Do you have a knack for art? is an international platform focusing on art education. Every year it organizes a contest for high school students who want to deepen their interest in art and express their opinions on contemporary art and society. The exhibition presents the best projects of this year's competition with the theme Freedom of Choice by teams from all around Slovakia.

At a time when SNG was still chasing novelties and even risked acquiring a diploma project of a promising graduate, a performance Man on the River (2011) by Tomáš Šoltýs (1985) was created. The image of the man, the artist himself, who, as Christ walked, "flowed" on the waves of the Danube, had a nature of an endurance exercise - it was a demanding, life-investing performance. It got noticed not only by the cultural audiences but also by the city's security forces.

Live art, in exceptionally diverse media, is in this period harder to lay hold of in museums than ever before. All the more therefore do we appreciate the generous financial gift from Tatra banka, now making it possible to take in live art for the second year running – to “catch the butterfly”. The exhibition presents the newest additions to SNG collections by artists of the middle generation of Slovakia's contemporary art. Erik Binder, Marko Blažo, Marek Kvetan, Denisa Lehocká and Milan Tittel together offer us a varied yet coherent assortment of contemporary art approaches, media, and themes.

The exhibition Disappearing Body is an experiential essay on the "disappearing" of physical bodies in our lives. It observes the general trend of decorporalisation of human existence, which has recently taken on new dimensions. Whether we regard the issue of different degree of physical „disappearing" within everyday life through the optics of geopolitical context, technological direction, "dissolution" of identities in online environments, post- or trans-humanistic theories, pandemic measures, spirituality, or self-observation, each of the aspects offers a wide range of interpretations. Similarly variable image is brought by the exhibition.

Zone is an educational space for visitors of all age categories, who like to explore, experiment, and want to learn more about interesting topics from fine art. Here, we connect interaction, new knowledge, fun, and relax with original works of art which are commented and explained though installations.

Looking at the statue 26 October 1921, destruction of the Maria Theresa monument in Bratislava (2007 - 2019) by contemporary artist Martin Piaček (1972), displayed in the window of Esterházy Palace - it is crucial to realize that we are just a couple of meters away from a place where the monument to Maria Theresa was unveiled in May 1897 and stood until its vandalistic destruction during the First Republic. Its granite pedestal stood there for another four years, without a monumental marble sculpture, silent remorse and a symbol of human vandalism.

Potential Agrarianisms sets out to diversify agriculture and pluralise its histories, recovering suppressed peasant pasts and activating their unrealised possibilities, destabilising urban-rural dichotomies, repairing the disconnect with the natural world and restoring caring and reciprocal relationships to the soils and plants that nourish us. Uncovering its origins in colonial plantations and embeddedness in the operations of extractive capitalism, the exhibition explores alternatives to the globalised system of industrial agriculture with its patent formula of chemical additives, noxious pesticides and genetically modified seeds, vigorously cultivated with fossil fuel machinery.

Several works by the designer and ceramicist Martin Bu (1976 - 2021) could be used as a concise spatial illustration for a dystopian novel. The world inside it went through a cataclysm. Some of the buildings have melted away, scattered with "corpses" of military machinery, others becoming habitat of sea predators. Nevertheless, Martin Bu does not concern himself with mere sarcastic commentary on various escapades of the genus Homo technicus from the position of critical or experimental design.

Do you have a knack for art? is an international platform focusing on art education. Every year it organizes a contest for high school students who want to deepen their interest in art and express their opinions on contemporary art and society. The exhibition presents the winning projects of this year's competition with the theme Idol by teams from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.