Radovan Čerevka and Adrian Kiss completely transformed the space of the former Synagogue of Trnava with their immersive installations as part of their duo exhibition produced by the Ján Koniarek Gallery. The two exhibitors forged their site-specific works in an artistic dialogue that focused on creating a unique, ephemeral environment based on a tangible, sensual experience in the physical space of the exhibition venue. The common platform of the works of the two artists was formed by hills, islands, and ponds of muddy clay disseminated across the floor of the former Synagogue. Writes Áron Fenyvesi, curator of the exhibition.

Dorota Jedináková interviewed both artists, exploring how themes of safety, memory, trauma, and political responsibility were embedded in their collaborative installation. Their dialogue touched on personal and collective vulnerability, the ethics of creation in a historically charged space, and how physical matter like soil, metal, or mattresses could speak to dislocation, resistance, and the fragility of home.

Dorota Jedináková: In this exhibition, we inhabit the space between home and battlefield. Mattresses, blankets, rusted structures, objects that are supposed to protect, yet in this space, they feel threatening. When was the last time you felt truly safe and what does that word even mean to you today?

Radovan Čerevka: The notion of safety is ambivalent. On one hand, it’s the personal sense created by immediate conditions around us; on the other, it’s shaped by a much broader context (sometimes referred to as the architecture of security) that can abruptly affect our personal experience. People can find themselves in hostile conditions overnight, not only in times of war, but also during crises of late capitalism. The word “border,” as used in your question, is especially apt. We live on the edge of private and public life more than ever before. A comprehensive sense of security across all comforts is perhaps a utopia. Something always falters, but let us be thankful that, at least for now, we can fall asleep without sirens, and while we may repress worrying circumstances as if they don’t concern us, such indifference should neither lull nor numb us.

Adrian Kiss: The notion of safety and home go hand in hand for me. How can someone feel safe if they’re not even allowed to sleep? My work Feküdjünk, Már Mennének dealt with such questions, though, as you said, the exhibition as a whole does too. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of home is that I have always had to investigate and redefine what it means, as its meaning kept shifting with me. It changed depending on where I was living in Europe, but also on where I was in terms of identity. I recognise the privilege of having a roof over my head and a place to rest; so for me, the idea of safety carries a different weight. I mostly feel safe in moments of unity, when I’m surrounded by like-minded people and can create a sense of home, a safe space, no matter the geographical or emotional context.

DJ: In the context of the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—do you see art as a way of processing anxiety or as an act of resistance? Contemporary wars blur the lines between civilian and military space. How do you, as artists living in Europe, a region long considered “stable”grapple with that shift? Do you feel the need to take an ethical stance?

RČ: I firmly believe in ethically motivated art that directs toward a humanist ideal. As an artist, I address crises like these through artistic means, although I also understand the acute need for concrete action. Ideally, this should translate into activist engagement, but that’s not always the case. For example, my material and financial support for Ukraine was not integrated into my art practice but expressed as a civic stance. On the other hand, I have previously addressed Russian propaganda using objects from the modelling kit company ZVEZDA, albeit in a gallery/institutional context. I worked sensitively with that material, trying, for instance, to enter their own model of Boeing 777 wreckage into a modelling competition in Moscow, but I was rejected. Currently, as a society, we are participants in a hybrid war with the Russian Federation, like it or not, so there can be no talk of peaceful stability.

AK: I often feel overwhelmed by my inability to effect change, especially when confronted with horrific actions like those of the Russian Federation and Israel. I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of my art practice, and the significance of the works that leave the studio and are exhibited, particularly in a synagogue. In this context, on a personal level, the studio practice is a form of stress relief. It’s where emotions like anger, anxiety, and the desperate desire to help, feelings often suppressed by social norms, can be channelled into making. But this personal dimension is deeply entangled with my professional practice; the two cannot be separated. From this position, I keep asking myself, how can I harness this energy and use it to support the oppressed? I’m still learning how to tap into that force, and how to meaningfully embed it in my work.

DJ: The mattress, as an object that can be both bed and trap, is a powerful metaphor. Do you embed personal autobiographical layers into such objects, or do you aim to abstract a collective experience of lost safety and intimacy?

RČ: For me, this exhibition is a return to earlier concepts linking global events with local situations, a “big world in a DIY arrangement.” Like when TV news enters the living room and its blue light falls on an Oriental rug handmade in the region being reported. I love such poetic shortcuts. I’d locate autobiography only in the use of my artistic methods and solutions. However, we adapted them into a shared narrative that indeed tracks collective experiences. Together with Adrian and curator Áron, we decided to work with the theme of home or its pathological derivatives. In this case, it meant remnants of home cast into a landscape situation. Key words were exile, inhospitable conditions... “dislocations” in the title refers to moving people and objects, but in a medical sense, it also means a part of an organism displaced from normal. The mattress is separating us from Mother Earth during rest, it became a multi-layered metaphor.

DJ: The exhibition works with a poetics of vulnerability and decay, yet it seems to carry a latent anger. Do you feel the political dimension of rage in your work or is it sorrow? Can we still talk about “politically engaged art” that isn’t illustrative but still reacts to the world’s catastrophes?

RČ: You put the word “engaged” in quotes appropriately, since it often implies a very targeted, sometimes utilitarian interest, which isn’t the case here. Our exhibition aims at a broader field of ambitions. We worked with a large-scale diorama, combining authentic materials with openly staged layers. We didn’t go for specific references; we wanted to go deeper and test the universality of meaning through objects with their own material significance. Although each work has its own coding and theory, they operate within a shared frame. We discussed a former domestic goods warehouse from the 1980s that burned down, leaving ruins layered with debris, pioneer clay, and other remnants. An even stronger theme was the degradation of a sacred building’s status under two totalitarian ideologies. If you ask about anger - yes, there's a certain rawness and direct handling of objects that can seem urgent, even fundamental.

DJ: Your works feel like an archaeology of the future: a hybrid of ruin and vision. How do you think about time? Is this exhibition a historical meditation, or an anticipation of a world that’s arriving or already arrived?

RČ: The exhibition has no fixed temporal anchor. Yet the topography of the installation invites movement through a landscape and perhaps following a narrative in which one becomes part of the environment. The references inevitably lead through our Central European region. Adrian has a strong connection with authentic regional ethnography, evident in the identity of his objects and methods. In my part, working with the interiors of mattresses, one piece invoked a Central European tendency to hide valuables under beds and mattresses, gold candlesticks and jewelry wedged in until the mattress loses its original function and becomes a miraculous cavity. It was also a sculptural task: how much can a single horizontal mattress support when we embed many vertical objects? This piece most closely connotes tragic events from the early 20th century. The concept of presenting nostalgia and vision is closest to what we aimed to evoke.

AK: When I think of time, I mostly think of memory. I can’t picture time in the future, only as something shaped by remembrance. Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with the idea of listening, listening to those around me now, but also to those in the past. And listening isn’t limited to sound; it extends into thoughts, gestures, and memories, like remembering how the wind once sounded. This kind of listening disrupts the notion of time as linear. It introduces a circular movement, where the past becomes active in the present, allowing us to recognise the interconnectedness of memory and time. In that sense, the exhibition feels like the remains of the past, both individual and collective, resurfacing in the present and continuing to circulate with us into the future.

DJ: You come from different generations and backgrounds. What was it like to share an exhibition space so intensively? How did your dialogue evolve during the process?

RČ: Since Adrian, as a fresh young artist, held a solo show at our private Make Up Gallery, I’ve admired how far and in how many shared moments his work has evolved alongside ours. The differences in our backgrounds are relatively minor, as both of us come from the same post-socialist Central European context. Preparation took several months and involved numerous mutual discussions and creative brainstorming about the conceptual and material nature of the new works. From the start, curator Áron Fenyves set the situation to create a shared platform for each of our interventions. The last two weeks spent directly in the exhibition felt like a residency with an inspiring and dynamic co-author with whom we connected on many levels.

AK: I feel lucky to have worked with Radovan. He’s a great listener and a deeply knowledgeable artist. Even though we come from different places and generations, there was a strong mutual respect that allowed for an organic collaboration. The strong reciprocal respect for each other’s practices, made this collaboration feel very natural.

Our communication throughout wasn’t about negotiation, because we had a shared intention: to make the most of this very special opportunity offered by the Ján Koniarek Gallery and its director, Adrián Kobetič. To me, the shared ground of the exhibition space reflects that spirit, the artists are no longer visibly present in the installation. Hopefully, our individual works have merged with the space to form something cohesive and collective.

DJ: The space of the former synagogue carries its own memory and trauma. How did you approach this architectural and historical “personality” Is it even possible to create in such a space without entering into a dialogue with its past?

RČ: That building holds both historical and exhibitionary memory, notably powerful gestures from the 1990s shows dealing with Holocaust memory and the spirituality of the space. Most artists addressed these themes only latently. Respect for these themes was felt in our exhibition, but not in the form of a strictly site-specific intervention using the architecture or its elements. Our installation, in a way, ignored the architecture, letting its materials intrude freely: cast-iron columns were buried and terrain spread beyond the usual corridor of the nave. From that situation, the visitor could exit and re-enter. Adrian’s large tire construction almost covered the rear wall with the star of David stained-glass window, but once you walked around it, you found the original Torah niche ruin, which we, along with the gallery director, cleared of leftover plasterboard and lit to reveal my intimate work Excessive Rationalism.

AK: At the same time, we were interested in what happens when our installation begins to generate its own spatial logic, one that challenges the building’s physical boundaries, while also running parallel to its memory and trauma. Almost like a parallel reality. Some works are installed in uncomfortable proximity to architectural features. For example, the large metal structure Roll Me, Squeeze Me, Say My Name comes within just a few centimetres of the synagogue’s balcony, reaching a height of five metres. It almost invites the audience to step onto it, or suggests that the metal structure holds the same authority, memory, and trauma as the building itself.

DJ: Your exhibition is deeply physical yet profoundly quiet. Do you feel the need to communicate with the viewer on a bodily level through matter, texture, scent, touch?

RČ: I’m glad you mention the physical dimension of the installation. In earlier projects, I worked with the instrumentalization of the body in a quasi-anthropological frame, though without figuration. And with themes of masculinity that shifted into marketing-driven heroization and aggression, also connected to military training. Adrian has long worked with the anthropomorphic qualities of objects in designer-sculptural expressions and ritualized bodily signs, working with objects of home and warmth. When we met, the motif of bodily presence without the body became one of our core collaborative principles. Other senses, such as the physical presence of the audience, traversing terrain, the smell of earth, and evaporating dark pools are additional aspects that could be experienced there.

AK: In my art practice I do feel the need to communicate with the viewer on a bodily level. Matter, texture, and presence are not just formal elements in my work, they carry histories, power dynamics, and lived experiences. Born in Romania and raised in Hungary and England, my personal history is shaped by diverse systems of social, economic, and ecological manipulation, hegemony, and extraction. At the same time, my childhood in rural Romania offered a different model, one grounded in care and reciprocity, where tending to the land was understood as a mutual act. These contrasting experiences have shaped how I approach material, remembering, resisting, and relating.

DJ: What is, for you personally, the most vulnerable moment within the installation?

RČ: You could have gotten hurt by a small accident (laughs). Otherwise, it depends on the sensitivity and personal mindset of those moving through the environment. It relates to what we discussed, about layers and the relatively broad distribution of associations that may affect participants with varying intensity. I intentionally use the word “participant,” since “viewer” seems too passive, which we consciously avoided given the open physical field Adrian and I created.

AK: We used local soil that was excavated from the digging site next to the synagogue. Building the exhibition meant hours of digging and carrying, labour that was both physical and symbolic. While working with the soil, we unearthed strange objects and animal remains that echoed the layered history of the land. For me, it was a vulnerable moment to relocate these remains into the exhibition. That act made me realise how memory, collective or individual, doesn’t just sit in the past, it circulates, lives in the present. These moments served as a kind of confirmation of what we were building.

Venue: Ján Koniarek Gallery

Artist: Adrian Kiss, Radovan Čerevka

Curator: Áron Fenyvesi

Documentation: Dávid Biró, Andrej Balco

Restless Dislocations of Radovan Čerevka and Adrian Kiss

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