Poster / Judita Csáderová, No title, from the series Reflections-Awakening, 1974-79, Edition 2022, 50 x 60 cm, Silver gelatin print, 1/3 (+ 1 AP)AUSGANG Studio, Bio Core 01, 2022, 20 x 30 cm, glass, liquid substance, bio organic material – mycelium, cables, EL – Wire cable and LED diode, 1/1

In its next curatorial exhibition, the FOG Gallery presents a prominent personality of Slovak photography, Judita Csáderová, with a selection of works from two series from the 1970s and 1980s, Reflections-Awakening and Imprints. At the same time, it also gives space to artists from the younger generation, the AUSGANG Studio – Radovan Dranga and Alex Zelina, who will present their latest light objects entitled Bio Core, created especially for this exhibition. The gallery’s effort is not only to connect generationally different approaches to creation, but also a common motivation, which in both cases is the importance of experimentation and manipulation in the creation process.

While the world of Judita Csáderová is dreamlike, poetic and continuous, in the work of AUSGANG Studio we come across a sometimes drastic reflection of the reality of today’s world, in which technology and its conveniences take on more importance than living forms. In both cases, however, we follow the stories from their birth to the moment of their passing. Csáderová uses her experience in working with light and depth of field and thus plays with the viewer’s vision. The light objects of Dranga and Zelina go directly to the essence of the matter, but at the same time they also rely on the imagination of their viewer, who is able to grasp the story and give it its own meaning.

In Csáderova’s series Reflections-Awakening, the author uses a figurative motif, which she inserts into manipulated landscapes created from various props, created by the just-mentioned game with depth of field. A set of photographs forms a story, depicting the cycle of life. The Imprints series is the continuation and at the same time the closure of the Reflections-Awakening series. The sand the author uses as the base material makes it possible to create a trace, which she captures with her camera as a plastic image with a seemingly convex surface. It thus preserves the given moment, which is fleeting, but at the same time eternal in the photograph taken.

The pair of artists, Radovan Dranga and Alex Zelina, who work together under the banner of AUSGANG Studio, are a special phenomenon on the Slovak art scene. They created their own concept in which they use cables, waste, light and music to create fictional worlds referring to a vision of a dystopian future. In case of the exhibited objects using organic materials – live mushrooms overgrowing the jars with embryos of robotic creatures is an added value. This conjunction is formally in direct contrast, however ideologically just strengthens the possibility to perceive life on two levels.

Even though it may seem at first glance that the exhibited works do not have a common denominator, and are unconnected by the way of technical execution and due to the time difference, the opposite is true. We can find the connection not only in the common motif of water and glass, or body and landscape fragments, but also in a very strong parallel between birth and eternity. The moment of awakening is permanently preserved here in analog photographs and light objects. However, they deliberately distort and deform our perception and make us wonder if what they present to us is really what we see.