InFlight magazine/January, February, March 2005
Marcela Prekopová, Editor in chief
Interview with the designer Matej Krén; his work "Pasage" was the most widely visited exhibition in Slovakia in the year 2004.
"I have not been exhibiting in Slovakia for a very long time, therefore I am pleasantly surprised that my project Passage has resounded so much in general public."
MATEJ KRÉN has won many international awards; there are only few Slovak designers as successful as him. Experts as well as laymen have been fascinated especially by prize-winning book projects like Gravity mixer, IDIOM, and Omfalos, too, which had been installed in German Duisburg in July this year. The last work of art represented Slovakia in an exhibition where the most interesting representatives of creative art of the new EU member states showed their works. The originality and art of Matej Kren were awarded in Slovakia, too; at the end of the last year he was awarded the prestigious Tatra Banka Prize for Art 2004.
In renowned world galleries, creations of Slovak designer Matej Kren (he was born in the year 1958 in Trenčín and he lives now for 8 years in Prague) magnetise thousands of visitors. Since May last year also Slovak visitors of the Gallery of the City of Bratislava that had installed the project Passage in Palffy's Palace, can admire this piece of art. There are around 13 thousand books divided and joined at the same time by a narrow passage. It is more than pure illusion; it is a symbol of endless value of human knowledge and of never-ending effort to decode the language of the world. It is an exquisite chance to reflect life in new striking connections. It is a challenge to which more and more visitors respond every day. At present Passage makes a part of the permanent exhibition of the gallery.
In your voluminous creative production, especially book projects attract nonpareil interest of experts, philosophers and the general public as well. The phenomenon of the book seems to dominate your contemporary works...
The fact that I have chosen the book is a result of a long genesis. The book has not always been the dominant material for my works, and, in the future it may not be dominant again. This issue is open. However, in the last few years it has become the major object of objects for me. The book is perfect in its formal simplicity and, at the same time it can carry the polyphony of meanings, contents, messages... As a consequence of this it keeps changing and substantiating in front of our eyes. Reading as well as perceiving a visual work of art is a sublime creative process and everyone has to undergo it for himself and in himself. This "active reconstruction" inside a man is a unique auto-dialogue and, at the same time, there is an anticipation that a new quality will be born. However, any such a change is a process of long sedimentation... Nothing is for free. Considerations like these were present during the entire process of creation of the Passage in which I tried to create a view of something the viewers cannot normally see in reality - the view into the very process of transformation of the world. I want to take the viewers literally into the process. In the Passage their senses may come under the power of illusion and they may feel destabilised and physically threatened. However, there is another kind of instability involved, too. There is a vertigo arising in a discrete manner - in abstract symbols and pictures hidden deep in the texts of the books. It a vertigo of transformation of the world into immaterial signs and, at the same time, it is an endless nostalgia from this "paper universe" being our last chance not to forget everything and exist at least "like this"... In my opinion, only when these both "vertigos" are closely connected, the real feeling of provoking uncertainty arises in the walker in the Passage...
Many people refer to your works as to ritual creations, they even consider them being kind of prototypes ready to transform a man spiritually. Is such an insight in accord with your original intentions?
I do not even dare to think my project can or should change the man, however, anything might happen. I think these are just metaphors the authors use so as to point out that my works have such a dimension, too. But, definitely, they are not any instruments or tools for changing people. They are rather some unconventional reflections of phenomena that do exist in us and around us. I try to evoke the situation when we start to perceive simple everyday facts in a different manner, we may even get scared of them or we might take them ritually... It might be a result of my life-long controversies with omnipresent and rigid "stereotypes".
Do your expectations of the reactions of the viewers book experiments participants come true?
My work is always like a step into an empty space. Sometimes it has to be systematic and precise, sometimes you cannot even move without intuition. But it is always an adventure, because some projects are kind of prototypes which have to be formed and completed just "on the spot". Actually, I cannot tell in advance how my works will be perceived by those whom they are addressed to. What is going to happen inside the viewers? For example it is interesting that in the Passage the phenomenon of fear has arisen. I calculated with some fear, but not to the extent the number of records in the visitors' book prove of. I always try to complete my work to "the end", i.e. to the stage to which my abilities and skills allow me. And after reaching this point I have to end it up and the project starts to live a life of its own. The way people perceive my works is extremely interesting and I am glad I could watch visitors' reactions in Bratislava, because in other exhibitions I only rarely manage to watch them.
How do you spend your time in-between projects? What do you do in your spare time?
This is a difficult question, because I do not use such denotation of my time at all. On the contrary, I have the feeling I do not have enough time for anything. When I complete my work of "a creative artist", I am looking forward to my "invisible" world of music and sound and I carry on with my audio-projects. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention I like reading. Actually, I always keep reading and other things are happening just in the short intervals in-between reading. Lately I enjoy if other people are reading to me and I can "listen to" the books. I like to perceive how the texts in kind of "a liquid state" expressly reveal their hidden architecture, tectonics, structure, rhythm... My way of reading does not allow me to perceive these.
The book entitled Knižní príbytky (Book dwellings) makes a part of the project Passage, too. The book has a symbolic mirror cover and it was written by Daniela Hodrová, Jirí Fiala, Jirí Machalický and Ivan Jančár - all are authors into the lives of who works of Matej Kren have entered. The author said about the book: "This is not a catalogue of the exhibition, but rather a pictorial-textual guidebook of my works with books. And, it is the only book that can be taken away from the Passage..."