26 years of Galerie Z

This year’s March 28th will be the culmination of Gallery Z 26, the year of its activity on the Slovak art scene. During this period, it held more than 200 exhibitions, exhibiting 2,720 artists from 36 countries. The exhibition program of the gallery focuses on the presentation of contemporary visual art by Slovak and foreign authors.

In addition to documentary material from six authors from three countries, a jubilee exhibition will also feature works by 42 authors from five European countries.

The gallery usually commemorates round and half-round jubilees, but since it had to be closed at the time of the 25th jubilee last year, the galleries moved the anniversary commemoration a year later.

26 years in the life of a person speaks about adolescence, adolescence and the subsequent full step into life, 26 years in the life of a gallery is measured completely differently, for mutation, puberty or subsequent decision making where and in which direction to step is simply not the time, it is the time to create a meaningful concept, build a greedy background, create useful contacts, conceive interesting exhibitions, reach a wide range of authors and, last but not least, in the case of non-commercial orientation of the gallery such as Gallery Z, building a sufficient range of possibilities to finance the actual operation of the gallery and the implementation of the exhibition program.

Gallery Z has gained a number of regular visitors, friends and sympathizers, collaborators thanks to its attractive program and activities in the past period, and also very good relations with many cultural institutions in Slovakia and abroad. Over 26 years, a very good cooperation has developed with several foreign cultural institutes or embassies, which are helpful in ensuring the participation of artists from their country in gallery projects.

The Gallery Z exhibition program has been profiled to showcase a wide range of generational authors’ representations, exhibitions include works by renowned artists to the works of the middle and youngest generation of authors. The only and decisive element in the preparation of the exhibition plan is the criterion of quality, but also of the author’s affiliation and his work in the context of contemporary visual arts.

The gallery’s main activity was the annual organization of the international sculpture exhibition – Sculpture and Object, which until 2017 presented twenty-two times in several places in Bratislava in the summer months, large-scale works by countless important Slovak and foreign artists.