Artist Statement

My work is characterised by a deep interest in relationships. They influence each of us and are a major aspect of social interaction. Every relationship enhances our personality and enables us to find our place in society and understand ourselves. My choice was a return to the sculptural figure devoid of ideology, political associations, or purely conceptual thinking. I am trying to tell stories that often draw on my memories and situations that seem paradoxical, absurd, and unsolvable.

The narrative as the basis of emotional conflict has always been important to me. I reflect on the situations that shape my values. My sculptural agenda focuses on the family environment, on my surroundings and personal experiences, thus I newly create them in the form of figure compositions and enhance my relationship to reality. An inseparable part of my work is my personal experience, my introspective immersion into myself with the aim to capture a substantial moment, a gesture or detail of the experienced, but also of the intended or supposed. I cherish, in an intrinsic and almost destructive way, the feeling of doubt, as it has often helped me to find strength to make progress. In the company of other people, I prefer to withdraw and watch in silence, having an inner monologue. In the silence of the studio, I interpret the visual sensations of the observed reality through narrative figure compositions, seeking answers to the questions that I have not raised.

Most frequently I focus on the male world, on masculine problems. In principle, I am interested in the male world, I am fascinated by male role models, even by the fact that I belong to the world of men. I am captivated by the position and the role of the man in the present, changed and transformed, because the traditional model of the man as a “hero” and the master of creation, a preferably active individual, is no longer valid.

Manhood has become an attitude. The problems of relationships have recently become public topics, and it is therefore natural that, in addition to public policies, research and documents on solely private topics are part of social problems. In the case of male studies, “individualism” has shifted from the heroic significance to the meaning of loss and failure. The expansion of the themes of male studies, the crisis of manhood and the branching of these meanings, for example in finding male role models, comparing the possibilities of following them (for instance the public theme of the crisis of authority).

I refer to the history of sculpture, to Christian and political motifs and male figures appearing in my work in the form of protagonists of everyday situations, in which they draw attention to the present reality of life – the position of the human being in society, his loneliness and confusion. With the elements of morality, these heroes try to instruct and illustrate in an informal comic way the many failures that stem from the essence of human nature and are part of human existence as such.

MIRO TRUBAC

The Man's and Boy's World and Experience

Miro Trubac graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava He studied under Prof. Patrik Kovacovský in the Department of Sculpture, Object and Installation. He belongs to a younger generation that returned to figuration, yet he does not burden his art with ideological and political residues or pure Conceptualism. His sculptures, frequently rendered as male figures, draw on the memories and situations that he finds paradoxical and absurd, puzzling and unsolvable. This is partly related to quiet introspection as he reflects on the situations that shape his value system in relation to reality. He actually speaks quite openly about his experiences with his family or close friends, visualising them anew. These recurring memories emerge as motifs presenting authentic values. An important moment of introspection and interpretation of his own subject matter is associated with his memories of childhood and adolescence when his thinking developed and he approached maturity, sharing a common experience with a respected person, learning from this experience. This is probably one of the motifs why Trubac works with male figures and activities in his small sculptures. His entire work is interwoven with motifs of doubts and their clarification, revived in the material and its enhancement.

More recently, Miro Trubac has worked on the subject matter related to literature and visual art, exploring recurrent themes and iconography as well as artistic devices: The Little Prince, Daedalus and Icarus, The Crucifixion / Descent from the Cross. All of them are very personal and he re-encodes them to achieve his visual perception. The Little Prince stands on a big box called The End. Daedalus holds the neck of his son Icarus in the air as if he did not allow him to fly. The subject of the Raising of the Cross in his rendition is interpreted as a theme of personal Jesus (Personal Jesus) no longer schematised by the medieval Christian dogma. He is raised by a group of men, the weight of his body spreading over them. Miro Trubac works with a variety of sculptural technologies including a 3D scanner, 3D visualisation, models figures in plaster and colours them. Apparently, his recent work allows him to create small sculptures and figure groups and visualise the scene that can strengthen the form of his thematic intention. He highlights humour and hyperbole present in the treatment of subject matter. Miros Trubac preferably visualises his creative ideas in bronze or woodcut. The subject and its social context correspond with his treatment quite naturally and spontaneously.

The artist is an accomplished sculptor and this is the reason why he has a better chance to exhibit his work in the Central European context. As a member of the young generation his ambition is to free figural sculptures from ideology and politics.

IVANA MONCOLOVA, Art Historian & Curator

Miro Trubac and his Denuded Figure

I have been monitoring the work of the young Slovak sculptor Miro Trubac (b.1986), a graduate of master's and doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (2011, 2021), for more than a decade, from his first solo exhibition at the Bipolar Reconciliation Gallery in Trnava in 2011 to his last presentations at the Schemnitz Gallery in Banska Stiavnica where he showed The Body. Intimate and Public, 2021, and at the Jan Koniarek Gallery in Trnava, at his exhibition Apple; New GJK wing. We highly evaluate his active participation in the Slovak art scene in recent years (numerous exhibitions and pedagogical activities at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava).

We consider it extremely important that the artist develops his own sculptural agenda and points to the disruption of traditional depictions of masculinity in classical sculpture in heroic postures, or within the gender discourse also calls attention to the exchange of roles and meanings. The mainstay of his work is contemporary figuration and focus on personal relationships and social interaction. The major area of his artistic perception is the male world and its conflicts, problems of loneliness, doubt or confusion in the current “fragmented” world. At the same time, his work raises an urgent question of whether the human body rendered in sculpture can be considered a relevant means of expression. The sculptor himself deals with “the extent to which the human body is able – as an information carrier fixed in the material – to formulate richly structured references in the period exceeding several generations”.

The current Trubac stage represents a certain benefit of his previous sculptural journey. His rendering of minimalist and highly personal figural compositions depict highly personal moments and situations presented through the body and corporeality. Trubac sensitively composes a sculptural mosaic of fragile personal statements and “testimonies” of his world, of sculptural thinking and the family background. Sculptures take the form of situations of close relationships, represented by the body, corporeality, or a selected representative fragment of the body (hand, fingers, foot). The subtle small figures rendered in white plaster resemble a symbolic significance that enhances the expression of purity, innocence and vulnerability of the world of his figures. The artist creates a series of scenes and dialogues, where the spectator, by entering the intimate environment of the figures, becomes a voyeur of human tragedies, of personal failures and inner disappointments that become public.

The artist considers different levels of social contexts and their encounters, for instance political-social critical contexts (Judas, 2017; The Ending of the Hand; Saturn, both 2020) up to the intimate situations of a woman-dominated couple (Virgo, 2021), or solutions to the personal story of his father's premature loss and coping with his death (Borrowed Hands, 2020).

In this manner Trubac develops the basic line of figure sculpture of the 20th and 21st centuries in a unique and authentic way, presenting his own model of figuration, intimate narratives of corporeality and paradoxical relationships in the current sculptural language and a powerful visual presentation.

VLAD BESKID, Art Historian, Curator & Gallery Director