BRATISLAVA.- Gandy Gallery is presenting a second solo exhibition by Ilona Németh, this exhibition by one of Central Europe's most important artists also marks the gallery's 20th anniversary in Bratislava, after 13 years in Prague.

Project "Thuja"

In recent years, I've observed that thuja trees in southern Slovakia are gradually dying, drying out, and turning redish - individual parts of the trees die, and eventually, entire trees and shrubs perish. I began monitoring and collecting information about them. These trees are gradually disappearing from our region due to warmer climates and the emergence of new insect species that have arrived because of climate change. Thuja trees originate from America and have been with us in Central Europe since the 16th century.
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In various languages, it is called the "tree of life". Symbolically, I perceive their gradual extinction as a sigh from nature, a sign we should take very seriously.

The other piece to be exhibited in the gallery is a ceramic installation with the text "When we arrive here, the garden is already here." The sentence is a paraphrase of Eline De Clercq's statement, which I interpreted as an eco-feminist statement about gardens: "When we arrive to the garden, the garden is already there."

The text is printed into the material of the objects, appearing as a relief, like our impact on nature and gardens.

The installation of white glazed ceramics and the story of the thuja trees represent the fragility of our ecosystem - in terms of both nature and people - I mean the general intergenerational feeling of threat to our present and future.

The objects of white ceramics and the text in the material evoke in me the fragility of our ecosystem and our security.

The story of the extinction of thuja trees and ceramic objects would also create a contrast but at the same time would be a reminder of the current situation.

Ilona Németh (1963, SK), visual artist, activist, curator and professor.
She exhibited widely both locally and internationally. She led the Studio IN, and in the years 2014-2019 also the international educational program Open Studio at the Department of Intermedia of the University of Bratislava in Bratislava. Since 2021, she has been a professor at the STU in Bratislava at the Faculty of Architecture and Design. In the years 2018-2021, she was the artistic director of the international exhibition and research project Eastern Sugar with the support of the Creative Europe program (following the solo exhibition of the same name, which was held in the Kunsthalle in Bratislava in 2018) in cooperation with Slovak National Gallery. In 2022, she presented her work at the Documenta fifteen in Kassel and held a solo exhibition at the Trafo Gallery in Budapest. Her permanent installation Grandstand was opened in a public space in Hohenau, Austria in September 2022. In 2023, she exhibited at the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, the Survival Kit 14 exhibition in Riga and the Jogja Biennale Yogyakarta in Indonesia. Her site-specific work “When we arrived here…” in cooperation with the Cite Internationale des Arts was inaugurated in Paris 2024.

Lives and works in Bratislava and Dunajská Streda.