Oskár Čepan

Jury Statement: The work of Andrej Kiripolsky arrives with the quiet presence of someone who has handled the objects he speaks about. Although his work is firmly rooted in the Slovak industrial environment, its concerns resonate across the broader complex of post-industrial transformation worldwide, rendering it at once particular and universal. The works feel recognisable in the strongest sense - not generic, but arriving at a kind of shared truth through the specificity of their material and historical grounding. The jury noted with appreciation the maturity of his visual language. This postconceptual idiom carries the weight of its local specificity while operating within a global conversation around labour, industrial decline, and the communities shaped and ultimately abandoned by it.

Andrej Kiripolsky is a Slovak visual artist based in Copenhagen. He graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. His work moves between sculpture, installation, and audiovisual formats. Rooted in Upper Nitra, a region long shaped by coal mining, energy production, and their social consequences, his practice looks at how industrial histories remain present in landscapes, materials, everyday situations, and collective memory. His recent projects include Have You Ever Seen Coal Burn? at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2025), the solo exhibition They may rest from their labor; for their deeds follow them! at Q Gallery, Copenhagen (2024), and Country roads, take me home at SVĚTOVA 1, Prague (2024). He is the recipient of the 15 June Foundation’s Honorary Prize 2025 and a current resident at Art Hub Copenhagen.

Portrait: Martin Lacko