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VASA Front Page Exhibition
#51

VASA Front Page Exhibitions
presents the work of emerging and established photographers, video or sound artists.

Dušan Kochol

CRUISING FOR A BRUISING

Dušan Kochol© Dušan Kochol

Curator: Michaela Bosakova

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"Brother, sometimes you get beaten up because you simply ask for it. Getting a testosterone thrill out of the emasculating pain and then wearing your marks proudly as war medals of phallic legion. Fed on the adoration all that you, my hero, can deliver is to bully yourself to unconsciousness, as the castrating eclipse occurs. The collection of black and blue maps is growing but the only road they show leads through your skin to the ugly side. Man up, shake off your ego erected goose bumps to make way for the pain to paint those bruises all over again,"

In the mentioned project, most of Dušan’s models were chosen randomly. The process of portraying was purposely physically and psychologically complicated, maybe even harassing at some point, the models have not been instructed or briefed before the photo shoot. Without them knowing, it was actually up to them to set the boundaries, which they don’t want to cross. The outcome portraits where hands of the photographer can be seen deforming the faces of his models, on one side become some kind of an archetypical picture of pain seen mainly in the western painting tradition, while on the other they contrast with the technic of screen printing ink used a lot in pop-art.

The Photographer: Dušan Kochol

Dušan Kochol graduated in Promotional Art Design from the School of Applied Arts, attended photography courses at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and London College of Fashion. The Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees were completed at the Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University in Czech Republic. As a contemporary artist, his projects have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. In 2016 he was presented with the Photographer of the Year award for the significant contribution to the quality, development and promotion of Slovak photography at home and abroad. The following year Kochol became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2018 his short film debut received a nomination for the Short video category in the Slovak Press Photo competition. Dušan Kochol founded and now directs and curates a festival of contemporary photography OFF Bratislava. For over a decade, the mission of the event remains to provide a large-scale platform for the presentation and promotion of young artists working within photography and new media.

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Michaela Bosakova is a new addition to the VASA curatorial team. She was head curator for Photon Gallery Wien, curator at the Central European House of Photography (Bratislava). Her work includes writing and reviews of photography, curating, promoting and exhibiting artists from all over the world. Michaela is the project manager a production manager of the The History of European Photography 1900-2000.

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