Andrej Dúbravský

current exhibitions

fermented house

08/09/2020 - 06/09/2020
Hájovňa
Banská Štiavnica

Fermentation is a chemical process in which microorganisms convert sugars into acid, gas, alcohol… depending on the type of microorganisms… These microorganisms create an environment that prevents (e.g. food) from decay, toxin contamination and mold etc. As an example, live cultures in kombucha convert sweet black tea into acetic acid. Our body contains almost the same amount of our own cells compared to bacteria -that thrives especially in our guts. This bacteria influences our taste, immunity and behavior. How much is it our free will and how much do we just serve the microbiome in our guts? Each of us is in a way a “Fermented house”. On the other hand we all live in a “glass preserve.

glyphosate orgy

12/09/2019 - 1/12/2019
Alšova jihočeská galerie
České Budějovice

We are living on the brink of an environmental disaster. Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide used to kill weeds. It has been globally popular with both large growers and amateur gardeners for more than thirty years. Thus, it has been accompanying Andrej Dúbravský’s generation from birth. It is so widespread that it has even been detected in human urine and in mother’s milk. It increases the risk of cancer by 41%. The Czech Ministry of Agriculture announced in January that it would not impose a blanket ban on its use, and so glyphosate orgies may continue. This is another topic featured in the Andrej Dúbravský exhibition.

previous exhibitions

potential wasted

05/06/2019 - 03/08/2019
DITTRICH and SCHLECHTRIEM
Berlin

It is against this apocalypse that the artist takes a stand with his vision of a peaceful, holistically aware, and queer agriculture. This is a life that is attuned to nature not so much because understanding it is a prerequisite of relentless production but rather out of a deeply felt affinity. Woven out of observations from day-to-day life and its ordinary realities, it is a vision that, in Pascal Gielen’s words, is already more utopia than justice. Dúbravský translates his bafflement and indignation over climate change and the prevailing blindness to ecological concerns into productive and free-ranging associations. Activists (as well as activist art) primarily seek justice, but Dúbravský aims to give shape to a state of affairs that will never come to pass, not even approximately, and yet is, for him, the only escape from an irremediably depressing present.

on-line camp

03/06/2015 - 01/07/2015
DSC Gallery
Prague

The name came from two phenomenons – the internet and the camp. Both of them represent something entertaining, a space for communication and place where an individual discovers his own identity. And exactly this motive is very typical for Dúbravský. His images are full of men nudity covered with nature. The element of uncovering and hiding is related to the ubiquitous human confusion when the physical body is imprisoned in the reality of live, but the spirit is often absent. However, nowadays the branches are replaced by the matrix of social networks and technological structures.

about the artist

Andrej Dúbravský

Andrej Dúbravský (b. Nové Zámky, Slovakia, 1987) lives and works in Rastislavice, Slovakia, and New York, USA. Inspired by a rural perspective from the organic garden and studio he maintains in countryside of southwest Slovakia, Dúbravský creates depictions of idyllic landscapes, silhouetted skylines of factories, self-portraits, animal portraits, and studies of male figures that confront timely issues of agriculture, industry, politics, identity, and sexuality. The works reflect an “ethical hedonism” and sustain utopian ideals under rather dystopian conditions. The artist’s paintings articulate his reflections in empathetic yet unsparing studies of the environment and its devastation, of man and nature. His broad art-historical repertoire is reflected by his most recent works, which explore contemporary versions of classical subjects such as the landscape or the nude—quite seriously and diligently in some instances, with aloof irony in others. The muted colors seem almost conservative until the beholder notes the contemporary and post-traditional context in which the paintings are set.