Blažej Baláž – WART, since 2006, series of conceptual texts, mailart
 

The principal motives of extensive cycle of conceptual letters by Blažej Baláž represent direct political engagement an sharp criticism pointed at the heart of cultural institutions. The resistance movement present almost throughout all authorʼs work is grounded in sending initiative letters, petitions, protests and calls since early 90s, which illustrate post-revolutionary, art and political events in Slovakia.

In our context the point is to unmask systematically the gallery space as an autonomous space independent from external control and to refer to it as to political space.

Consistently recorded and followed events (or rather passivity) in Slovak galleries or the passivity of political authorities and their incompetence to react to current cultural problems becomes the specific sort of memory, administrative document and direct action. I tis a revolt consciously taking form of an official notification camouflage in order to get effectively to the point to which it was aimed.

Connecting to clerical aesthetics of administrative language these letters become the direct document of authorʼs effort to exert pressure on political structures from the part of an ordinary citizen and at the same time (following the conceptual foundation) they monitor the problems in cultural institutions that havenʼt been resolved yet. The personal authorʼs engagement and artistic position are retroactively set into the gallery context being the object of their criticism and their are pointing at the fact that artistic world (no matter how autonomously related to the world) is subjected to the same bureaucratic rules as the rest of the world.

After the year 2000 the series gets more stable form with the title Wart ( first time appeared in Baláž artwork as a title of performance Artwart in 1997). It becomes autonomous title of ongoing letter cycle , in which "art" and "war" share the common space.