Dušan Zahoranský was educated and started out as an artist in Slovakia, but he has long been a figure in the Czech art scene. His work is a fusion of a conceptual outlook and thoroughly material and sculptural approach to his visual treatment of objects and installations. In his earliest works he was already combining spatial installations with video in interesting ways, which can be seen, for example, in his piece 300 000 000 Years (1999). The juxtaposition of his predominantly sculptural approach to objects and the materialised presence of a text in them has long been a prominent theme in his work. The tension generated by this fusion of an artistically conceived material artefact and the adaptation of its appearance into a semantic message in the form of a text plays on the classic duality of perception involving the object and its commentary. Here the conceptual distance is lost and, as in the case of the work Here and Now (Tady a teď, 2008), or more recently The (linguistic) Circle (2012), and the text is in the foreground of how its material substance is played with. It is as though the material character of the artefacts actually wins out over the text and its message; this is readily apparent in his work Manifesto (2012), in which only a negative imprint of that word remained present in material form, and a written manifesto by the artist was burned after being recited aloud just once. All that survived was that material, visually worked residuum in the contours of the word that forms the work’s title. A separate chapter in Zahoranský’s art is his video works, which sometimes employ visual reinterpretations of musical and literary contexts (e.g. Georgian Summer (2006).
Dušan Zahoranský
Studies:
1995 The Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
1994 The Nottingham Trent University, England
1991- 1997 The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava,
“Free creativity“ studio of Prof. Juraj Bartusz
Awards:
2002 Artists in Residence, Wien, KulturKontakt Austria
2001 The Oskár Čepan art prize , finalist
1997 Young Slovak Visual Artist of the Year , finalist
1997 The 1997 Central European Culture Initiative Prize
1996 Young Slovak Visual Artist of the Year" finalist
1996 Pépiniére programme – scholarship – Cork, Ireland
2012
„Manifest“ Galerie Pavilon, Praha, Česká Republika
2010
„Necenzurovaná verze“ Galérie Karlín Studios, Praha, Česká Republika
2009
“Fuck you!Me?Yes you”, Benzinka – Slaný, Česká Republika
2008
“Off Course” hosté FMSW, Galérie Meet Factory, Praha, Česká Republika
2006
“Tajenka” Galerie Jelení, Praha, Česká Republika
2000
„Časování“ Galerie 761, Ostrava, Česká Republika
„Osobní mytologie“ Mestská Rimavská Sobota, Slovenská Republika
„300 000 000 rokov“ Galéria Priestor, Bratislava, Slovenská Republika
2011
The Exhibitors and His Spectators", The Brno House of Art, Czech Republic
2010
The Czech-Slovak Pavilion, Hilger Brot Kunst Halle, Vienna, Austria
Erased Walls SPACE Gallery, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
One day you will lose it all 4+4 days in motion, Prague, Czech Republic
2007
Sundial Open Gallery, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Form follows…risk Gallery Futura, Prague, Czech Republic
2005
Praquebiennale 2 Karlin Hall, Prague, Czech Republic
Contemporary Slovak art 1960 – 2000 Ernst Museum, Budapest, Hungary
2003 The Last East European Show Museum for Contemporary Art Beograd, Yugoslavia
2003
STADT IN SICHT New Art from Bratislava, Künstlerhaus, Wien, Austria
2002
Czech and Slovak photography of the 80s and 90s Olomouc Museum of Art, Czech
Video-Zone , the 1st Biennial of Video Art , Tel Aviv, Izrael
Slovak Photography 1925 – 2000 City Gallery Prague, Czech Republic
2001
New connection The World Financial Centre, New York , U.S.A.
1999
Art for Free Slovak Pavilion at the Venice Biennial
1997
Young Slovak Visual Artist of The Year 1997
1996
Young Slovak Visual Artist of the Year 1996,
Národní galerie v Praze, Nadace Jana a Milan Jelinek Slovenská národná galéria, Bratislava Súčasné slovenské výtvarné umenie – Zbierka Prvej slovenskej investičnej skupiny, a.s. Krajská galérie výtvarného umění ve Zlíně Soukromé sbírky
