Oskár Čepan

Mario Chromý (1974, Malacky) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czechia, at the studios of Miloš Šejn, Jiří David, and Vladimír Skrepl (1996–2002). He moves across a wide range of media, the use of which always depends on the topic he currently focuseson. He creates videos, installations, performances, but also more traditional forms such as paintings, drawings, sculptures, and objects. In his oeuvre, he works with the aesthetics of mass media, subversively using it to comment critically on the current social or media events. The artist’s hallmark is humor, often bordering on tragicomedy, with which he handles otherwise somber topics like political corruption or the emptiness of media. He intentionally works with current visual symbols – company logos, charts, but also clothing as a mark of certain social status (clothes specifically play a prominent role in his realistic statues). He takes his inspiration from tabloid press headlines,“the more absurd, the better”, turning them into drawings, paintings, and collages (e.g. the project A Slovak Man’s Hand Stuck in a Toilet After an Attempt to Retrieve a SIM Card (Slovákovi sa zasekla ruka v záchode, keď lovil SIM kartu, 2014). Apart from visual art, Mario Chromý creates music (the ASIO project) and designs books (for the Czech-Bosnian publishing house SAMIZDAT). He won the Oskár Čepan Award in 2003, the finalists’ exhibition took place in the Bratislava City Gallery. Apart from Chromý, the finalists shortlisted for the award by the jury included Martin Kollár, Svätopluk Mikyta, and Boris Sirka.