Milan Vagač (SK) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. He holds an artist doctorate for the work called Project of lost future, focused on the research of memory in contemporary art. He is a co-founder and editor of Magazine X, dedicated to contemporary drawing. In 2011 he received the ESSL Art Award. Milan has exhibited his work in Budapest (Chimera-Project), Prague (Karlin Halls), Vienna (ESSL Museum), Tallinn (VAAL gallery), and Genova (Sala Dogana gallery). He lives and works in Prague.

His current practice is focused on drawing and painting. He maps their limits and overlaps with other media such as object, installation and performance. He conceptualizes the processes of drawing and painting themselves and reveals their hidden layers and structures. Drawings become construction plans for further materialization as objects or installations.

His current work is built around references to modernism, particularly the tendencies related to geometric abstraction. He invokes original modernist ideas to define the shape and role of similar contemporary approaches. Part of his research is the role of painting itself in the post-digital era and the impact of new technologies on the traditional media.

During his stay in Nida Milan will explore  the connection between drawing and object, as well as between line and space. He would like to trace the limits and overlaps of these relations through their creative dialog.

Milan Vagač's residency has been supported by Fond na podporu umenia (Artist Support Fund).

instagram/milanezen

www.magazinex.org

She is part of the team for Kaunas city’s candidacy for the European Capital of Culture 2022, where public art practices, audience development and community involvement take a key role in programming. Currently she initiates a new Creative Europe project titled MAGIC CARPETS, which will bring together more than 12 European organisations’ programmes in public spaces, inviting emerging artists and performers from different European countries to produce new site-specific works in collaboration with local artists and communities.

During her residency at Nida Art Colony Virginija will create the last journal issue for Kaunas Biennial’s project Networked Encounters. She will also draft a project proposal for the Creative Europe platform. Virginija will work with Kaunas City Municipality’scultural strategy documents and produce a programme for Kaunas city’s candidacy for the European Capital of Culture 2022 project. This is an ordinary working month for Virginija, albeit in a different place.

In Cologne she co-founded the Baustelle Kalk (Construction Site Kalk) artspace, a platform for local and international artists. Baustelle Kalk is a gallery, bar, and venue for social activism as well as avant-garde and noise music events. In 2013 she co-founded the performance collective/lab StriKing, which explores issues of gender and beyond. In the last two years Janina has been working at the intersection of art, social politics and local activism.

Working with spatial installations, the artist intends to deform a space which is free of a preconditioned code, assigning an alternative perceptive pattern to it. By applying recurrent recognizable signage, she renders the space usable for the functioning perceiver. Janina has been working on the subject of “copied reality models”, trying to turn authentic realities into a simulated (fictional) space.

During her stay at Nida, the artist plans to engage in a personal investigation and visualization of a forgotten document – a rediscovered old hard drive with 300 pages of text from 2003-2009, revisiting the subject of memory and memory manipulation explored in her early works.

www.daslechzen.tumblr.com/