Sphéra at Pohoda 2022
The concept of the visual stage of Pohoda will be exceptional in 2022. Years long-term collaboration with Ilona Németh and Dano Dida will be concentrated in a single work this year—Sphéra by Juraj Gábor. The artwork has become a major event on our art scene, winning many awards and especially respect from the art community. It will move from the New Synagogue in Žilina to the exterior for the festival and will be at the airport for the longest time out of all the constructions. We are starting on 6 June with a transfer to Trenčín and subsequent assembly. We recommend reading the word of the originator, Juraj Gábor, on our website or in the comment under the Post.
19. May 2022
Juraj Gábor says about cooperation: “Sphéra is a perfect Platonic body, yet nothing is really perfect or fully finished. In the New Synagogue in Žilina, it was Peter Behrens to initiate its materialization, its completion, and covered the central church space with one its section. Over the course of 17 months, we completed the rest of Sphéra with a wooden structure and filled it with artists, art, and visitors to transfer this material and its attached spirituality to the horizontally flat “cosmic landscape” in Trenčín.
I have often wanted to create something like an airplane but have never done and probably will not do that, but I will “land” at the airport for a month and a half.
I will exchange the emblem of the celestial vault—the dome with the star of the Synagogue for the open sky (for some, the celestial vault), where we will look through the circular window at the unstoppable variability of the sky and stars and everything above us.
The artwork Sphéra (originally Completing The Sphere) will mark something new for two previous years of the festival: Pohoda in the Air and Pohoda on the Ground.
They created a great context for the short-term placement of Sphéra, the potential of which we will only experience live.
The main theme of the work for me is the vertical connection of what is above—untouchable, unconquerable, intangible, with what makes us, using our touch, by the way of material, feel close to the ground we walk on until we take off or otherwise ascend.
The great thing is that we will be the first on the airport taxiway so that we can build the wooden spherical bowl for the intangible Sphéra until the beginning of the festival.
The space of the work will be many things, but I believe that it will remain a visual oasis, a small grove on an open plain full of diverse life-giving almost unceasing sound environment of Pohoda.
Sphéra tests our courage to experience emptiness, just nothing. In the overall architecture of stages, tents, cafeterias, toilets, parking lots, concrete and grassy areas, its construction will be an intricate yet also a regular drawing in space. It will be a recognizable place to wander to, to find a shelter there, to rest, to look around the festival from elevation, to listen to discussions or lead them with other people. It will be a place to express oneself. Artistic performative and amateur shows, small musical pieces. I myself am curious how much of an empty programme space we can create in it, so that people in the Sphéra can create a programme themselves.
The work only creates a “shell” that partially defines what is outside and what is inside. It will still be an audio and visual interface where we can meet 24 hours a day.”
There will be the program under the heading ESET (open) space in Sphère on Pohoda 2022.