portfolio
bio
links
contact
study
2007 Academy of Fine Arts & Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, Printmaking and other media Department, doc. Vojtech Kolenčík, akad. mal
2005-2006 Exchange study in Fine Art School of Newcastle, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain
1997-2001 Secondary School of Applied Arts in Lednické Rovne, Slovakia
personal exhibitions
2010 Questions-Answers, Gallery Peter Matejka, Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Slovakia (in collaboration with Monika Pavlechová)
2010 Questions-Answers, Gallery Miloš Alexander Bazovský, Trenčín, Slovakia (in collaboration with Monika Pavlechová)
2008 Martin Derner and Matej Lacko, Auction company SOGA, Bratislava, Slovakia (in collaboration with Martin Derner)
2007 Matej Lacko 01, DIVYD Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
2006 Diary, Long Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain
group exhibitions
2010 Linocut Today 2010, Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany
2009 Returns, Gallery Peter Matejka, Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Slovakia
2009 Black&White, Kressling Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
2009 Small scale II, Kressling gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
2009 MishMash, City Gallery, Topoľčany, Slovakia
2009 Jeune Création Européenne - Biennial of Contemporary Art, Paris, France
2007 Exhibition of Diploma works of AFAD, Art House, Bratislava, Slovakia
2007 Linocut Today, Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany
2007 Small scale, Kressling gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia
2007 Horizons of topicality III., Gallery Miloš Alexander Bazovský, Trenčín, Slovakia
2006 Silhouettes, Espace 16, place Denfert Rocherau, Paris, France
2006 Biennial of Contemporary Printmaking, Miszkolc, Hungary
2005 Young Faces, Gallery Peter Matejka, Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Slovakia
2005 Postcards, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain
2004 Printmaking - Sculpture, MA-Art Gallery, Dunajská Streda, Slovakia
2002 Intersection, Gallery Peter Matejka, Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Slovakia
competitions and fine art auctions
2010 91. Auction of Slovak Contemporary Art, SOGA, Bratislava, Slovakia
2009 88. Auction of Slovak Contemporary Art, SOGA, Bratislava, Slovakia
2008 Competition Painting of the year, Foundation of VÚB bank, Bratislava, Slovakia
2008 82. Auction of Slovak Contemporary Art, SOGA, Bratislava, Slovakia
2007 Linocut Today 2007, Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany
2007 75. Auction of Slovak Contemporary Art, SOGA, Bratislava, Slovakia
2007 Competition Painting of the year, Foundation of VÚB bank, Bratislava, Slovakia
artist residency
2007 LINO 2007, International linocut symposium, Gallery Klenová / Klatovy, Czech Rep.
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Asking questions and searching for answers
Asking questions and searching for answers is quite natural for a young generation. Courage to explore and experiment, have desires and goals, determination to fulfil which cannot be fulfilled. Matej Lacko also goes somewhere along this way; with his well-thought-out and unambiguously and conceptually defined author’s graphic and painting programme with specific poetics; quite rightfully, he joined the youngest generation of artists to which an important position in the Slovak scene of graphic and plastic arts belongs.
A finalist in the VÚB Foundation Price – Painting 2007 and 2008, and also a successful representative of the youngest Slovak graphic art abroad (a prestigious show Linocut Today, Städtische Galerie, Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany, in 2007), with a sense for conceptual equipoise and parsimony of artistic expression, he experiments with traditional painter’s and graphic techniques transposing them into his current and expressly contemporary performance.
Both in graphic art and painting, Matej Lacko combines, connects and overlaps several media. Sometimes, he uses a photographic model by which he is inspired or he further modifies and manipulates it by a computer. He combines classical prints from a surface with digital photography, computer graphics, collage, screens, and stamp technique. He often works only with an indication of objectivity. Only grooves and notches appearing on coloured surfaces of wooden plates – matrices of xylographs leave characteristic traces. Independently from a format he chooses in his performance – either if small or large-size works in lines drawn economically or pure coloured surfaces planary placed geometrically are of concern, we can find with him a feeling for a shape, colour, composition, harmony, but first of all for an absolute author’s concern for an idea being depicted.
He does not change poetics, he does not develop new subject areas, but he penetrates preferably more into a depth just by trying, discovering new procedures and material variability preserving a concentrated parsimony of the presentation itself. Paradoxically, an impressive monumentality of expression carried also by even rather small author’s works in them can be perceived in pure and minimalist – either in linear, shape or colouristic depiction.
Painting, graphic art, drawing and three subjects at the same time to which he is devoted in parallel are represented in his performance equally.
Enchantment by the countryside prevails with Lacko. It appears as a carrier of emotions in his conceptual performance paradoxically.
A suggestive and meditative mood radiates subconsciously from his never-ending panoramic landscapes often regrouping themselves even behind the horizon. The countryside is also a part of the environment and space around, the human’s life.
In his works – in indications, in minimalist and economic compositions of lines and surfaces, we can find notes and commentaries on the experience he lives through around him routinely. One time, these are only abstractly expressed observations as a flow of the author’s ideas; another time, concentrated into subject records of the countryside, environment, an action, a human society, from where an object of our commonly lived reality emerges sometimes – whether lines of buildings, vehicles, airplanes are of concern.
He formed figural motifs into the most frequently depicted portraits of pilgrims as paraphrases to a period of Romanticism in performance by C. D. Friedrich (1774 – 1840). As if the man – a pilgrim, symbolised him the journey, a long, often uncertain, demanding one awaiting for us in our pilgrimage... Robust, anonymous portraits and figures often appearing in his performance also in a monumental and large-size versions as if they expressed feelings of individual loneliness and estrangement of an individual in a present society.
Despite experimenting with both artistic media and techniques, the performance by Matej Lacko has been maintaining an interesting value of utterance and a continuous development tendency with its subject persuasiveness since his first artistic appearance.
Intense and emotional engaged interest in the subject, characteristic poetics of the artist and his ability to record different moods and essences of life both addressing and disturbing him can be found under the surface of external parsimony, arrangement and certain up to impersonalized purity of an artistic expression.
Real perception of the time, environment, countryside around him bring Matej Lacko impulses and themes but which he filters through his own raster into two dimensional works bearing his seal (stamp) of individuality of an angle of artistic view and individual artistic execution.
ep