The exhibition project Backup (Záloha) is an archive of traces from the artist’s own past – personal toys from his childhood that have been backed up as a prevention against their loss...
“A backup, or the process of backing up, refers to the copying and archiving of computer data in another form or place so they may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.”
The exhibition project Backup (Záloha) is an archive of traces from the artist’s own past – personal toys from his childhood that have been backed up as a prevention against their loss.
Backup can be divided into two parts. Firstly, it is a collection of computer drawings created via graphical tablet. The postmedium of digital painting preserves the physical identity of toys without the change of their anatomical form. The artist in this way prevents the involuntary decease of symbols from his childhood and he gave them new life in virtual reality. The digital paintings are screened on several monitors simultaneously, pulsating and rhythmically changing in sequences in the alternative premises of the Nitra Bunker. The presentation accentuates positive attributes of digital painting such as lightness, variability, and its hyperspeed compared to bulkiness, steadiness, and slowness of traditional painting.
The next part of the exhibition consists of tangible objects that create certain repositories. When toys have been reincarnated into the electronic world, their existence in our reality ended. Their souls disappeared and what remained is only the matter that the artist conserved into concrete tombs or vaults made of Plexiglas. The effort to achieve weightlessness was transformed into the creation of physical weight. Hlinka cannot give up completely the materiality linked to his person history, childhood era and age of innocence, as if he wants to return to it recurrently, as if the toys were the entrance into his own Arcadia where playing is the only activity. The toys thus become memorials, monuments of this period; he turns them into totems and consequently backs them up.
Mária Janušová
—
Dominik Hlinka (1989) is a sophomore student of the Master’s Degree program at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, specialization Painting and Other Media, Painting Studio of Klaudia Kosziba, M.F.A., PhD. He has participated in many group and solo exhibitions, for example Model Situation (Modelová situácia) in Bratislava’s Hangár Gallery or The Limits of Habitability (Limity obývateľnosti) that he created especially for the reconstructed stone dwellings in Brhlovce. His Bachelor’s work Backup (Záloha) was nominated for the Essl Award 2013.
Exhibition opening:
Exhibition views:
