Ján Kekeli: The Floating Floor

The exhibition by the Spiš-born artist Ján Kekeli presents a comprehensive photographic cycle from 2021 titled Floating Floors. The presented works evince a strict objectivization of reality or the creation of new experiences, the search for answers and, at the same time, an expression of the intimate map of encounters and perceptions of the world. Kekeli’s photography is being premiered here at the Gallery of Spiš Artists within the framework of the Profiles dramaturgical cycle which is intended to showcase the work of some of the leading lights of the contemporary Slovak art scene.

As with his earlier work, the artist works with a concept that straddles the borders of artistic and documentary photography, with an accent on the creation of static “still lifes” which are expertly exposed using large-format analogue cameras on sheet film. The resulting photographs are the product of a perfect appropriation, with meticulous details laid out according to a preconceived composition in which objects are transformed into sculptures, thereby forming new narratives and contexts.
Mgr. Lucia Benická, exhibition curator

In his meticulous efforts towards the objectivization of reality and the creation of what we might term a new reality of reality or experience, Kekeli seeks out answers and, at the same time, depicts concentrated emotional-intimate (or autistic) maps of how he experiences and perceives the world. The vertical aligned compositions and the striving for this kind of arrangement (even at the cost of a certain provisionality) are a powerful expression of the character of these musings which might seem, at first glance, so desperate. The metaphorical movement of the symbols of individual compositions, which are in principle a simple language, document the melancholy nature of the individual attempts to achieve at least some kind of progressive solutions. Through refinedly simple and eternally precise records of undistorted images of documented objects, situations and people, in Viraj’s unique artistic tonality, the layers of emotionally charged basal models and the causes on which we build our decisions, acts and thoughts. It is from the cause itself that something arises. 
Mgr. art. Eduard Kudláč, exhibition co-curator

About the artist
Ján Kekeli (*1984, Kežmarok) studied under Filip Vančo at the Studio of Ľubo Stacho and the Photography Laboratory at the Academy of Fine Art and Design in Bratislava from 2006 to 2012. In 2009 he completed a study internship at the University of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland. In 2012 he was a finalist in the Startpointprize and the winner of the Photograph of the Year Award at the Nadácie VÚB Awards. In 2013 he was a finalist at ESSLART, an award for young artists, and in 2016 he won a scholarship from Nadácie NOVUM, a foundation for new art. The artist’s work has featured in dozens of solo and group exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad (Czech Republic, Finland, France, Poland, Slovenia, Italy). His works are represented in private (Slovakia, Austria) and public collections in Slovakia (the Slovak National Gallery, the Nitra Gallery, the Central Slovak Gallery in Banská Bystrica, the Kysuce Gallery in Čadca). He currently lives and works in Bratislava.