Mentored by Jana Geržová
The exhibition Restless Dislocations in the former synagogue, now serving as a Centre for Contemporary Art, presents a joint artistic project by Radovan Čerevka (1980) and Adrian Kiss (1990).[1] Through the creation of a site-specific installation, the artists radically transform the synagogue’s interior into a space of unsettling atmosphere. The installation works with the image of an apocalypse and invites us to enter a barren landscape where we can explore layers of metaphorical images tied to the processes of social decline and the transience of human life in an increasingly uncertain future. Curated by Áron Fenyvesi, the exhibition brings together two generations of Eastern European art reflecting themes that transcend the boundaries of past and present. Its concept opens complex questions concerning memory, identity, and collective trauma caused by the tragic events of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust. At the same time, it reflects the contemporary experience arising from war conflicts that threaten our sense of security and stability.
Upon entering the synagogue, visitors are immediately confronted with a fundamental question: where are we actually located? In a specific gallery environment, in the abandoned storage of a derelict building, where traces of its original purpose gradually fade, or in an exterior resembling a peculiar landscape environment? This ambivalence becomes one of the strongest moments of the installation, which transforms the former sacred building into a site of disrupted stability and identity. The main space of the synagogue has been reimagined as an environment of ambiguity, where it is no longer clear what belongs to the artists’ creation and what remains part of the original architecture. Such a radical intervention recalls Hans Haacke’s installation Germania, presented in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993. By shattering the marble floor of the pavilion – built by the Nazis in the 1930s – Haacke raised questions about the relationship between history and the present, coexisting within a single place. This act liberated the present moment trapped within the memories of the Second World War and challenged the pavilion’s role as a symbol of German identity by confronting it with its fascist past.
Similarly, by referencing the wartime Slovak State (1939–1945), a satellite of the German Reich, Čerevka and Kiss intervene in both the physical structure of the synagogue and its symbolic meanings. Their intervention takes the form of a landscape relief made of clay hills forming a system of valleys with enclosed bodies of water, their dark colour evoking a sense of contamination. Within this terrain appear components of the exhibition – appropriated everyday objects and original artworks – together creating a new symbolic language. Mattresses, blankets, tins of food, or candlesticks can be read as basic survival equipment for emergency situations and serve as metaphors of lost homes. This powerful symbolism provokes thoughts of decay and collapse.
The premise of lost identity and collective trauma is inseparably connected with the site itself. Most of Trnava’s Jewish population perished during the Second World War, and the building itself suffered devastation. Under socialism, it was stripped of its fundamental function as a sacred space, and today it can be perceived as a site of tragic human experience. The history of the synagogue and the Jewish community in Trnava, from the Middle Ages through the Holocaust, resonates with Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire. In his theory of “memory of a site”, Nora examines the relationship between history and memory as two constructs granting access to historical events in different ways. On one side, history – as a reconstruction of the past – is, for Nora, a critically insufficient interpretation of historical facts. On the other, memory – as a social phenomenon – is ever-present, shifting between recollection, forgetting, and rediscovery. This form of memory can also be mediated through art, and the present installation aims precisely at this. It enables the viewer to reinterpret collective traumas, essential for searching for one’s identity and coping with collective memory. It thematises the transmission of memories, follows and foregrounds emotional deprivation caused by the consequences of the Second World War and the politics of genocide, while also emphasising the significance of the Jewish community in the cultural history of Slovakia. In doing so, it invites audiences to form affective bonds with previous generations (including Holocaust survivors), approaching Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. Introduced in the 1990s, this term refers not to a conscious return to suppressed recollections, but to remembering mediated through art, which allows us to relive past events through strong emotions. In the context of Nora’s theory, the installation Restless Dislocations may serve as a mnemonic anchor that reactivates essential, often repressed layers of both individual and collective memory.
From the opposite perspective – not looking into the past, but into the present – the works reflect the global realities of today: geopolitical tensions, war conflicts, environmental and refugee crises. Through the reflection of memory traces and the aesthetics of the post-apocalypse, the artists paradoxically also create a space for questions of potential hope, born amidst ruins and isolation, following the loss of the safe haven of home in the chaos of destruction. In this context, strong notions such as stability, security, social tension, and oppression resonate as markers of our time and as warnings of a dystopian future. The concept of dystopia, often defined as the antithesis of utopia, understood as a concept of an abstract ideal society. The prefix “dys” stands for evil, complexity or abnormality. It also symbolizes an imagined place semantically different from utopian ideals, and points to negative social developments, analysing processes of decay, and predicting historical catastrophe.
The post-human artistic environment evoking civilisational catastrophe is conceived as a form of archaeological fiction, offering both analysis and exploration of symbolic and metaphorical cultural images. It presumes visitor engagement, inviting us to step into an abandoned landscape where field research into traces of former human civilisation becomes central. The works embedded in this post-apocalyptic environment are conceived as excavation sites or probes, encouraging not only passive perception but active uncovering, reconstruction, and interpretation.
Adrian Kiss approaches the space through experimentation with textures and materials. Oversized quilted blankets and pillowcases or metal constructions are transformed from domestic objects into sculptural reinterpretations. A monumental vertical construction linking the synagogue’s floors recalls a military fortification filled with tyres and a quilted woollen blanket, dominating the space while also serving as a bridge to other objects that look unintentionally scattered across the modelled terrain. Kiss develops his individual artistic language in layered artefacts that, through their visual structures, suggest remnants, ruins, and rubble of human presence after a fictional catastrophe. Their forms evoke residues of tragedy, vulnerability, and traces of past settlement represented by a temporary shelter, leaving us with the suffocating impression of precarious safety.
Čerevka’s works, placed within this shared platform, appear as excavation-like situations evoking a minefield – partially buried in soil, partially revealed on the surface. Mattresses are transformed into objects of new meaning, defined by what lies hidden within them. Tins, mock grenades and mines, or fragments of barbed wire embedded in the foam radically alter the perception of the mattress as a safe place. Other mattresses conceal valuable objects – jewellery, gold teeth, candlesticks – turning them into metaphorical safes for times of danger. This striking contrast demonstrates the disparity between comfort and latent threat, between existential security and life-threatening peril. Opposite Kiss’s monumental structure stands Čerevka’s work created from a deconstructed prefabricated fitness machine. A closer look reveals a pulley handle replaced with a bone, and weights substituted with mock ammunition. Čerevka’s series of fitness-related objects can be read as a commentary on civilisation’s aggressive drive for power and domination – a force of progress, yet also a potential cause of destruction and demise.
Built upon the aesthetics of the post-apocalypse, the exhibition Restless Dislocations does not offer straightforward answers about the fate of human civilisation. Instead, it engages viewers in an associative game through the layering and overlapping of original and appropriated forms. In their post-apocalyptic environment, the artists reflect on the extreme psychological consequences of war and the contemporary state of the world while conveying a longing for stability and security. Though the scene of a dystopian landscape may initially appear as an inescapable catastrophe presupposing the end of humanity, it gradually reveals itself as a space for exploration, reconstruction, and reflection on the destiny of both nation and humankind. This process opens the possibility of new critical perspectives on the past and of preventing the repetition of past mistakes – thus opening a path towards a more optimistic view of the future.
Translated by Kamila Talarovič
Izabela Vydrnáková is a 1st year student of the full-time PhD programme History and Theory of Fine Arts and Architecture at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Trnava in Trnava and at the Centre of Art Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. Previously she studied History and Theory of Art at the Faculty of Arts, University of Trnava. Her current scientific interest is focused on the research of cultural memory in contemporary Slovak art under the guidance of her supervisor doc. Daniel Grúň. In the past she worked as a private researcher in the field of architectural-historical and art-historical research of monuments in Slovakia. She has published contributions in conference proceedings, periodicals and catalogues, for example in the proceedings of Studia historica Tyrnaviensia or in the catalogue of the exhibition SKÚTER VI – young art event, Trnava 2024.
Jana Geržová is a historian, critic, curator and editor, editor-in-chief of the journal Profil of Contemporary Art. Between 1994 and 2001 she was the curator of Synagoga – Centre for Contemporary Art at the Jan Koniarek Gallery in Trnava. She is the author of several monographs, Otis Laubert – Ascetic without Limitation (2001), Daniel Fischer (with J. Mojžiš, 2016), Ladislav Čarný (with D. Čarná and J. Čarný, 2022), Eva Filová: We Will Not Be Silent (2024). She contributed two studies to the publication History of Slovak Visual Art – 20th Century and the study Myths and Reality of Conceptual Art to the proceedings of the international conference Conceptual Art at the Turn of the Millennium. Her study was included in the 2009 anthologies Gender Check: A Reader Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe and Ideological Ways of Writing. She contributed to the anthology Bridging the Gaps. An Anthology of Art Criticism in Central and Eastern Europe. From 2000 to 2007 she was President of the Slovak Section of AICA.
[1] Radovan Čerevka, Adrian Kiss: Restless Dislocations. Synagogue – Centre for Contemporary Art, Ján Koniarek Gallery, Trnava, Slovakia, 13 February – 11 May 2025. Curator: Áron Fenyvesi.
