3rd DANUBE BIENNALE
International exhibition of young artists from the Danube countries
Exhibition: International Exhibition
Curator: Kristína Jarošová
Location: Danubiana, Slovakia
Date: 2015
The 3rd DANUBE BIENNALE presents 22 artists from the young and middle generations across ten Danube basin countries—Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine.
The subtitle of this exhibition, Contemporary Icons: The Art of Spectacle, suggests several overlapping themes that provide insight into the diverse artistic forms and techniques of the participating artists. However, rather than focusing on summarization and evaluation, the exhibition emphasizes the dialectic nature of these matters and creates space for open discussion.
This brings us back to polemics concerning the discredited values of capitalism, the (im)possibility of autonomous artistic production, commodity fetishism, the commodification of art, the society of the spectacle, and the question—what becomes an icon today, and how? How do contemporary icons adapt to functioning within the tangled web of mass culture images, the superficial reading of symbols, and the spectacular visuality of objects? How have the importance and function of this concept evolved when traditional religion, once the fundamental value of society, has been challenged by the religion of consumption?
Read more
The consumerist lifestyle has brought about a sense of uniformity, diminished personal freedom, and a crisis of values. Even protest against the system itself becomes a commodity, typically absorbed and transformed by market mechanisms into yet another product.
According to the French thinker Guy Debord, spectacle emerges in such a society as a false representation of reality—one that shapes models of identification and creates artificial needs for individuals. In response, artists explore visually striking forms that blend industrial design, deliberate imagery, and the sleek language of advertising. Through clichés, repetition, kitsch, and shifts in context, they blur the lines between high and low culture—disrupting aesthetic norms and challenging established meaning.
These seemingly playful and simplified references often conceal a deeper critical reflection on the contradictions of contemporary life. But is it possible to critique spectacle and capitalism in any way other than through spectacle itself, without inevitably becoming part of the very system? And if we accept this participation, where is the threshold at which critique ends and complicity begins?
The third millennium has brought both new realities and new paradoxes. The 3rd Danube Biennale provides an opportunity to observe and confront these systemic changes—offering a space for reflection and potential transformation. New times = new icons.
Exhibiting Artists: Erik Binder (SK), Michele Bressan (RO), Nemanja Cvijanović (HR), Michal Černušák (SK), Tanja Deman (HR), Viktor Frešo (SK), Daniil Galkin (UA), Patrícia Jagicza (HU), Paulina Jazvić (HR), Vikenti Komitski (BG), Kristian Kožul (HR-DE), Marek Kvetan (SK), Marcel Mališ (SK), Stano Masár (SK), Ioana Nemes (RO), Pavle Pavlović (HR), Stepan Ryabchenko (UA), Nikita Shalenny (UA), Erik Šille (SK), Maja Vukoje (AT), Clemens Wolf (AT), Vlasta Žáková (SK)
Text by: Kristína Jarošová