* Oskár Čepan (1925 – 1992) was a strong critic and art theoretician with a broad scope and general solid knowledge, a devoted editor and anthologist, an erudite and receptive author of texts about contemporary Slovak visual art, a philosopher, theoretician, historian and critic. He played an essential role in the Slovak history of visual art of the 20th century, and his texts are still valid and surprisingly accurate today.
Contact
mail: oskarcepanaward@ncsu.sk
Organiser
Miroslava Urbanová, Director of NCSU, is a curator and art critic. Since November 2021, she has been working as the gallery manager of the Medium Gallery in Bratislava. She has a master's degree in art history from the University of Vienna, and a bachelor's degree from Comenius University in Bratislava. She is a member of the editorial board of the Flashart CZ/SK magazine and the feminist newsletter Kurník. She regularly writes for Artalk, Profil and Glosolália, and edited art statements for the international project Secondary Archive. She enjoys connecting people from different fields and countries, and in addition to group exhibitions, her favorite format is a lecture, so she invites various experts to the interdisciplinary lecture series New Interfaces at the Medium Gallery. Since 2012, she has tried her hand at almost all positions in the gallery, primarily in Slovakia, but also in Austria, in various public and private cultural institutions, but she likes the best management position, from which she, however, ultimately takes care of all aspects of the gallery. She is interested in contemporary art practice in all media and positions, but her attitude towards them and her work is primarily feminist and egalitarian. She enjoys humor and management of various borderline production and installation situations, which is not a mindset standard in this field, but an advantage. She completed a course in art writing at the Salzburg Sommerakademie and a residency for artists and curators organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art in Kuldiga and for people from art criticism by East Art Mags in Warsaw. Selected curatorial projects/group exhibitions: 2024 Slovak Venice. The Art of Mystification, Artrooms Moravany 6 (with B. Komarová), 2023 Cocoon, Rekos Revúca, 2022 Haraway's Children, Medium Gallery Bratislava, 2019 MELANCH LIA, Museum of Art Žilina, 2019 Y (with Ľ. Kotlár and B. Komarová), Umelka Bratislava, 2018 Deeper Down Than Inside, Medium Gallery Bratislava. Many other group exhibitions and solo exhibitions of mainly Slovak artists. Bibliography (selection): monographic publications of Mária Balážová, Lucia Dovičáková and Viera Kraicová.
Petra Nela Pučeková, Project Manager, is responsible for the organizational aspect of the Oskar Čepan Award. She completed her studies at the Department of Intermedia, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, with a year-long stay at KASK in Ghent, Belgium, where she studied performance. As a project manager she worked in the Studio vvv at the Department of Intermedia, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. In addition, in the past she has held several coordinating positions on national as well as international projects (Institute of Anxiety, LES/Woods). In her artistic practice she is interested in the slow, the collective and the performative.