Eastern European Collectors
Knoll Galria Budapest

 

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Otis Laubert - Second visit

Otis Laubert: Watchman, Idea: 1989, Realisation: 2009, textile jacket, watches, coat hanger, 83x83x5 cm

18.05 - 15.07.2023

The exhibition shows a selection from the work of the Slovak artist Otis Laubert, including the important installation “Fluidum”, solitary works and some of his key series such as Collections, Flags, Cartography or Mail art.

Otis Laubert's art was one of the big surprises in 1989 immediately after the fall of the iron curtain; he was invited to major exhibitions, such as the world exhibition "Metropolis" in Berlin in 1990.

Otis Laubert (b. 1946) belongs to the founding generation of Czechoslovak conceptual art and is a member of the A-R Group. Since 1965 he has been active in the underground art scene and under communism presented his work almost exclusively in unofficial non-gallery spaces. He entered the official art scene after 1989 and started exhibiting publicly in galleries at home and abroad. From 2015 to 2016, he ran his own Otis Laubert Museum in Bratislava. In 2021, together with his longtime collaborators, he founded the non-profit organization Otis Laubert Creative Association, whose purpose and goal is to manage, promote and support his artistic work and activities.

In his early years he was influenced by Surrealism and Pop Art, but later his work moved closer to the spirit of Fluxus and Neo-Dadaism and is characterized mainly by free associations, word play and humor. His main artistic medium is the found object. This includes a very wide range - things from everyday life and their fragments, but also remnants of human activity, such as knots on string or paint buildups. In his objects, assemblages and collages, he attributes new aesthetic or semantic value to these banal things, expressing himself through his unique visual poetry.