sometimes i like to go to gym with my hair loose
site-specific installation
13 December 2025 – 28 February 2026
Galéria Jána Koniarka
Trnava, Slovakia
objects production: holyhotpunkx
painting work: Matej Maturkanič
architecture: Maroš Greš
production: Petronela Pučeková
installation team: Lukáš Karaba, Lukáš Sobota, Jozef Pilát
curator: Miroslava Urbanová
photo documentation: Michaela Prablesková
13 December 2025 – 28 February 2026
Galéria Jána Koniarka
Trnava, Slovakia
objects production: holyhotpunkx
painting work: Matej Maturkanič
architecture: Maroš Greš
production: Petronela Pučeková
installation team: Lukáš Karaba, Lukáš Sobota, Jozef Pilát
curator: Miroslava Urbanová
photo documentation: Michaela Prablesková
The suggestive and descriptive titles of Kotlár's latest projects, formulated in the first person, are not an open invitation to glimpse into the artist's inner world, but rather allow us to identify with or distance ourselves from a given statement, to form a kind of relationship with it. This is also the case with the work created for the Oskár Čepan Award exhibition, Sometimes I like to go to the gym with my hair loose, which describes not only the liberating feeling of breaking an unwritten norm of fitness body etiquette in a given context. It also refers to a specific space that has a certain purpose, equipment, and the aforementioned codes of conduct. However, in the gallery space, we do not see the machines for disciplining and perfecting the body, but instead objects referring to changing rooms – places of short temporary visits for the purpose of transformation. Kotlár thus creates a simulation of a transitional liminal space that needs a body to be activated.
The installation is characterized by the colour green, which is used in photography, advertising and film as a background – a so-called green screen for the subsequent projection/keying of a digitally created environment onto a monochrome surface.
The installation is characterized by the colour green, which is used in photography, advertising and film as a background – a so-called green screen for the subsequent projection/keying of a digitally created environment onto a monochrome surface.
This color is also used because it differs most from the color of human skin. The artificiality of the color and the space transformed by it thus serves as a gateway for possible projections featuring human figure, but in Kotlár's work, it remains in its unanimated technical state. Similarly non-interactive are the components of objects that refer in their form to service and utility objects, but within both parts of Kotlár's installation they remain an allusive reference to larger frameworks – norms, competitiveness, physical discipline and purity – shattered by confusion over their (non)functionality or multiplied to negate their uniqueness.
The last room of the exhibition with Kotlár's installation is some sort of a bonus level, a randomly fitting climax without a sense of real reward. The author refers to theories of American professor Jack Halberstam, which situate the concept of success within heteronormative, patriarchal, and capitalist structures – thus opening the door to rethinking the concept of failure as a potentially successful starting point for their critique.
The last room of the exhibition with Kotlár's installation is some sort of a bonus level, a randomly fitting climax without a sense of real reward. The author refers to theories of American professor Jack Halberstam, which situate the concept of success within heteronormative, patriarchal, and capitalist structures – thus opening the door to rethinking the concept of failure as a potentially successful starting point for their critique.
Miroslava Urbanová





