For this exhibition, Martin Derner presents at Kubikgallery a set of works mostly created in 2016. The formal and conceptual diversity is such that each given step at the gallery leads to a new surprise and experience.

Martin Derner (1973), born in the old Czechoslovakia and now living in Bratislava, where he works, is an artist with a vast curriculum of exhibition. He arrives to Kubikgallery for the second time to exhibit his work, nurturing the relationship that he has been developing with the gallery.

Some of his pieces constitute series of works, being directly related, whereas others arise unexpectedly. However, all of them, when understood together in the global sense f the exhibition, contain a certain familiarity among them. Derner’s hand reveals a recurrent use of the objects overlap technique and of the manipulation of images, the last directly related with his personal taste for the surrealism of Renee Magritte, which we identify in several of his canvas, such as Jump (2016). Also characteristic of his entire artistic production is a predominant choice of neutral tones, except, among these works, the red piece Multiple.

It’s from a very particular aesthetic that the artist explores several artistic practices and diverse materials, forms, and concepts, having in each artwork, something that surprises and challenges the eye. This surprise element reveals an influence of Dadaism, a movement that introduced such methods of artistic creation. Moreover, Martin Derner uses in his works collage and the transformation of objects of our daily life, reintroducing the ways of the ready-made in the contemporary scene. The series Sketch is the example of that, since the functionality of the objects is taken away from it, replacing it with an artistic charge by intervening directly in its surfaces. The artist uses these forms of artistic production in a revival of one of the most important turning points of the history if art. Therefore, in a duchampian way, we are invited to think about the actual dimension of the field of artistic creation, vast, polysemic, with infinite possibilities.

Still, when looking at the title f the exhibition, Banalities, nothing ordinary is presented. As the artist explains, his creations arise from a renovated look and understanding on the common objects, for them to reborn into a new life.

Constança Babo