Galerie Emanuel Layr is pleased to announce Stano Filko’s first solo show at the gallery, an exhibition of new works by the Slovak artist, opening on Thursday, January 26.

The ‘vacuum’ originally represented the ideal of empty space in antiquity. For Plato and Aristotle such a substance was frightening and impossible. Aristotle refused the notion, stating, “a vacuum does not exist”. However, since antiquity generations of physicists and philosophers, as well as psychologists and artists, have considered the concept of “total emptiness” useful and inspiring. Yet the concept of the vacuum no longer represents an ideal empty space; it has come to simply mean a space that is empty of matter.  From modern particle physics we learn that the vacuum is considered the ground state of matter. The most representative and enigmatic moment for such a state of matter is the BIG BANG. This is what Stano Filko takes as the subject matter for his new show at Galerie Emanuel Layr – the vacuum as an intermediary phase between, before and after the UNIVERSE. Filko’s concept of the vacuum is, of course, not a direct answer, but rather an indirect conceptual and imaginative background to Leibniz’ famous question: Warum ist überhaupt etwas und nicht vielmehr nichts? (Fedor Blascak)