NEVER ENOUGH/ BEGONE ESTRONE — Oskar Felber, Paula Gogola and Natália Sýkorová @MEDIUM and VUNU, Bratislava

Submission
July 21, 2025

NEVER ENOUGH/ BEGONE ESTRONE

Oskar Felber, Paula Gogola and Natália Sýkorová @VUNU and MEDIUM, Bratislava

Bratislava becomes a destination for contemporary art this July, as two exhibitions open just days apart. On July 22, Paula Gogola and Natália Sýkorová debut their collaborative duo show Begone Estrone at MEDIUM, an institution affiliated with the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. The following day, July 23, Oskar Felber presents a new solo project NEVER ENOUGH at VUNU Bratislava. All three artists are part of the VUNU gallery program, showing how institutional and commercial contexts intersect through a shared group of artists.

Begone Estrone is a collaborative exhibition that brings together practices of two artists, Paula Gogola and Natália Sýkorová, whose work intersects at the convergence of personal identity, technological landscapes of female bodies, both of which they explore through the perspective of female health and care. The exhibition coalesces their individual critical practices into a meticulously constructed environment, activated through Adam Rýznar’s exhibition design and Johannes Tröstler’s sound compositions.

At the core of this exhibition is an inquiry into the bathroom as a heterotopic space, a site where the intersection of public and private, the ritual and the mundane, purity and contamination converge. The artists collectively transform this banal, often overlooked site into a complex topography of power, identity, and survival. The simulacrum presented here functions as a critical rearticulation of the space, one that foregrounds the socio-political anxieties embedded within its very materiality. The bathroom, reimagined as a site of liminality, encapsulates the tension between a sanctuary and a space of profound vulnerability. Here, the bathroom becomes a stage for a tension-filled narrative, where ritual, angels, estrogen injections, alchemy, urban decay, and their aesthetic become a potent symbol of broader societal issues, particularly those surrounding gender, identity, and the body.

A performance will take place during the exhibition opening. Performers: Teuta Jonuzi, Exegesis, Sam Novak. The show is curated by Zuzana Jakalová.

On July 23, VUNU Bratislava presents NEVER ENOUGH, a new solo exhibition by Oskar Felber, curated by Niki Bernath. The show brings together a selection of recent paintings in which Felber departs from strict abstraction and returns to a more figurative language. The motifs that emerge include fragments of bodies, symbols, and masks, which are partially veiled by aggressive brushwork and overlaid geometric forms, creating canvases that feel infected by an external force.

The result is a strange friction between joy and violence. Fluorescent colors clash with murky surfaces, while rigid shapes interrupt otherwise fluid gestures. Rather than offering resolution, the paintings hover in a kind of visual unrest that mirrors the anxieties of image-making itself.

Felber, known for his intuitive process, continues to layer oil and acrylic into thick, almost sculptural surfaces. In NEVER ENOUGH, the act of painting becomes both performative and precarious. Every canvas appears on the verge of collapsing under its own density, yet still holds together in tightly controlled compositions. What remains is a painterly field marked by instability, tension, and persistence.