Artist: Radovan Čerevka
Title: Heroes’ Prop Room
Curator: Peter Megyeši
Venue: Bratislava City Gallery
The exhibition Heroes’ Prop Room presents the results of a long-term artistic research project focused on former and current military sites in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Through a complex multimedia installation composed of videos, objects, and paintings, Radovan Čerevka reflects on and comments upon the transformations in the functions, uses, and perceptions of this specific cultural landscape. In the observed locations—shaped by the tension between their original militaristic purpose and their current adaptations for new uses—the artist uncovers traces of memory and evaluates the complex interactions between nature, visitors, and military technology.
Former military zones have not only formed unique biotopes, revealing surprising effects of military activity on fauna and flora, but they also function as hybrid spaces of concentrated imagination. Their appearance and both their original and secondary uses have been shaped by various ideas and prejudices related to military conflicts, their simulation, heroism, adventure, recreation, and human behavior—understood not only as an individual experience but also as part of the depersonalized body of the army.
At a time marked by escalating threats of global conflict, increasing defence spending, and the accompanying militarization of society, reflecting on the networks of relationships unfolding within spaces of former military activity acquires a new urgency. The artist’s dialogue with the residues of the past and their adaptation reveals natural and cultural aspects of the military that often remain overlooked.Radovan Čerevka (b. 1980) is a Slovak visual artist based in Košice. He graduated from the Studio of Free Creativity 3D led by Juraj Bartusz at the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University in Košice and also studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. In 2006 he co-founded the artist collective Kassaboys. He received the Oskár Čepan Award in 2013 and completed a residency at ISCP in New York. In 2021 he was nominated for the Tatra Bank Foundation Award for his solo exhibition Building the Real Body at Kunsthalle LAB in Bratislava. He lives and works in Košice.