MILAN SOKOL

Opening: 3.02.2017, opening hour: 18.00

Open until: 3.03.2017, opening hours: Mon.-Sat. 12.00-18.00

It is the first exhibition by the Slovak artist Milan Sokol at the Biała Gallery. It focuses on two distinctive topics selected from his oeuvre. The first part of the presentation is connected with the series Postcards – Tapestries created fifteen years ago. It is a collection of 248 works (size of a postcard) including relief prints (the earliest printmaking technique) and original stamps on paper. The number of works corresponds to the number of various motifs, from objects, plants and animals through ornaments, symbols, hybrids and inscriptions to artists’ portraits. The second part of the exhibition shows works from the series Recyclization 2012-2015. Created with the weaving technique, these paintings made of used aluminum packaging produce an effect of pulsating fabrics, multicolored collages and amorphous mosaics.

Sokol’s works, both on paper and of metal, are the result of a long, strenuous and laborious, manual process. His actions are much more than an artistic gesture. They are also a social intervention, which fits in with the ecological ethos of recycling. In a defiant way the artist comments on reality. By mixing various techniques and using old beer and beverage cans he critically addresses the problems of consumerism, advertising, globalization and the crisis of culture.

Milan Sokol (b. in 1952) graduated from graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (diploma under prof. Witold Chomicz and prof. Franciszek Bunsch). He has had a few dozen solo exhibitions and participated in over eighty international shows in twenty-three countries around the world as well as in numerous outdoor workshops and symposiums on graphic design. He works as a professor at the Department of Arts Education, Faculty of Education, at the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica.