The Passage by Matej Kren

The "Passage" is a work of Slovak artist, Matej Kren and is as author's gift a permanent part of City Gallery of Bratislava collection.

As author wrote, the "Passage" represents a kind of symbolic "shortcut across the world" in which we exist or dwell: through the factual, real world into the world of human culture, where reality is exchanged for another - virtual - reality, for the reality of word, text, sign, symbol, image, and back again.

The project itself is a metaphorical synthesis of a number of formal semantic elements: an entrance, a path, "endless walls" of books, mirrors, light, an exit and even the physical presence of the viewers themselves. Here, viewers change from "passive" observers into actors that help form the work's symbolic and semantic aspects. Their physical presence is converted into an image - an "image of the walkers" stepping through the passage and simultaneously an "image of the pilgrims" walking along a narrow path through "infinite" space. These metaphorical sources reveal for a moment the possibility of "glimpsing" that hidden, inconceivable yet omnipresent "world-flow".

Despite its essentially discrete present, the Passage becomes an obstacle, and simultaneously the sole possibility of movement in the space of the gallery or the world, and thereby reflects another aspect of that "flow" - the absence of any other alternatives... - concludes the author.

The Passage is a part of collections in the Palffy Palace, Panska Street.