Viki Kollerova - Kameň ó Lom

Kameň ó lom

Bratislava, Slovakia VI - XI /2023

Heavy Symbolism / Ťažká symbolika X/2023

Curatorial text for Kameň ó Lom exhibition

by Miroslava Urbanová

Stone as a slowly sedimented time. Quarry as a place with a peculiar space-time, which has been aggressively affected by man, in order to extract as much material as possible in the shortest possible time. Detonate, break, load, take away, process, abandon.

The natural monument on the outskirts of Bratislava is not exactly an attractive tourist spot.

It reflects the hybridization of the natural and the artificial through irreversible changes caused by human intervention in the structure of this rich granodiorite source.

Photographer Viki Kollerová reflects upon multiple levels of appropriation of this space — on aggressive mining in the past, fear of the local self-proclaimed guardian, leaving threatening messages in the area, but above all on her temporary interventions, in which she non-invasively inhabits the quarry with her own body.

For the first time, Kollerová is photographing a more consistent series in the open air in Slovakia, where the wilderness has a form of a steep cliff sprayed with tags. The local dramatic light brings a different characteristic to her photographs — particularly shaping the body and the surroundings. Disruption of natural cycles of this place and the discrepancy in experiencing its different temporalities remain subliminally disturbing. Every step on a dry branch or swearing after tripping over some forgotten concrete weights overgrown with moss now breaks the silence.

Kollerová’s interweaving with the landscape is this time full of paradoxes: it is kind, but also permeated with inner tension, mediating both humorous and pensive compositions. Her photographs are carefully planned snapshots that radiate the atmosphere of a breaking point, disruption, but also efforts to deepen, fully feel and incarnate into an inscrutable local microcosm, that has taken in everything drawn from its surroundings and yet hasn’t lost any of its majesty.