Conference information: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
In Bratislava: Silvia Morávková, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , T: 421 254 43 0746

In its stringency, obsession and peculiarity, the oeuvre of Július Koller is one of the most idiosyncratic and consistent in European art since the 1960s. Yet Koller is not only a seminal figure in the history of the neo- and post-avant-garde; his work has long been a critical inspiration for artists and intellectuals. In the most recent past, Koller's concepts of the Anti-Happening, the Anti-Picture, the Universal-cultural Futurological Operation (U.F.O.), his actions, objects, texts and the enormous referential archive he built up, have attracted growing interest on the part of a broader art public, and his works have found their way into major collections and museums all over Europe and beyond.

This first international conference on the oeuvre of Július Koller aims to discover new methodological and theoretical prospects for interpreting and presenting the artist's practice, the vast extent, comprehensive approach and conceptual rigour of which is becoming increasingly evident. This and the topicality of Koller's artistic method – his strategy of using real objects, the real world, everyday life as a given program for an aesthetic operation and an endless aesthetic displacement intended to put an end to aesthetics – are subjects of analysis and debate between local and international scholars. The conference provides new opportunities to meet and hear from Koller's most important and influential contemporaries as well as younger artists from both Eastern and Western Europe, thus enabling a reappraisal of the influence of Koller’s work on post-conceptual tendencies in contemporary art. During the conference, the Slovak National Gallery and The Július Koller Society present a research exhibition of Koller's works from their collections.

The conference lays the groundwork for a catalogue raisonné and a large monographic exhibition at the Slovak National Gallery, scheduled for spring 2010, followed by an international tour through major museums and art institutions.

"Július Koller U.F.O.-naut?" is a co-production of The Július Koller Society and The Slovak National Gallery

The Július Koller Society

Honorary President: Květoslava Fulierová
Founding Members: Georg Schöllhammer (chair), Mária Hlavajová, Aurel Hrabušický, Naďa Lovišková, Roman Ondák, Boris Ondreička, Kathrin Rhomberg.
Researcher: Daniel Grúň
Organization: Ina Mertens
Logo: Florian Pumhösl, Design: Martha Stutteregger, Website: Michael Dettmer

Slovak National Gallery

Director General: Katarína Bajcurová
Researchers: Vladimíra Büngerová, Petra Hanáková, Aurel Hrabušický, Katarína Müllerová
Organization: Communication centre SNG, Secretariat of Art Collections SNG - Ľuba Maceková, Silvia Morávková


Made possible by: