Dýchanie. Oslava vzduchu by S. Filko at Pohoda in the Air
At the Pohoda in the Air festival, we will work primarily with the emptiness of the Trenčín Airport. The exception will be two visual art works: one of them will be Breathing – The Celebrating of Air (1970) by Stanislav Filko, which the artist himself also called “Wind in a 6m pressure ball” and later “Pneumatic heart” and “Breathing-RespirationSF”. According to art historian Lucia Gregorová Stach, the works combine Filko's creative approaches across a whole decade and, at the same time, outline his future creative direction: life energy and body (red biology), the universe and its pulsation (blue cosmology), and the indication of a new spirituality (white ontology). We can exhibit Breathing – The Celebrating of Air thanks to the Slovak National Gallery.
04. July 2020
Lucia Gregorová Stach further writes about the work: “The pneumatic object of a balloon in its various forms is irreplaceable in Filka's work. His Breathing shifts the idea of an interactive environment towards a monumental object that is, characteristically, closed to humans, but at the same time Filko provides it with a ʻmetabolicʼ construction and theme. It is the breathing as a basic function of life and air as its condition, as well as the pulsation of the universe, the rhythm of infinity, the eternal cycle. The word “breathing/breath” is also related to the spirit in the etymology of Slavic languages.
The period's fascination with spherical air-filled shapes, which prevailed in the 1960s in art and architecture, combined romantic notions of the past with utopian notions of the future. Finally, the up-to-date images of landing spacecraft were accompanied by balloons. According to a review by László Beke, Breathing looked from a distance as if ʻsomeone forgot a huge green-and-white beach ball on the shoreʼ, which, however, gives the impression of a ʻmodern monumentʼ.”