When darkness falls, Trenčín transforms into a place filled with light, colour and unexpected artistic experiences. During the closing weekend of the European Capital of Culture, selected corners of the city will come alive with light and audiovisual installations, offering a new perspective on familiar places and their atmosphere.
At Trenčín Castle and in the Alúvium area, art installations will be presented in cooperation with the White Night festival.
Take an evening walk through the city and discover how contemporary art can transform public space into a striking light experience. Let Trenčín after dark surprise you!
DayInstallation opening hoursNoteFriday17:00–23:00Castle only until 22:00Saturday17:00–23:00 Sunday17:00–21:00
During these hours, Trenčín Castle will be open to all visitors free of charge.
Installations
BN Label & Martin Gabčo – Glow
Location: Southern fortifications of the castle
The mystical atmosphere of Trenčín Castle will be enhanced during White Night by the site-specific light installation Aura, unfolding among the castle walls in the depths of the dark night. Light, mist and space come together in a subtle visual image that allows the natural setting of the ancient castle and its unique atmosphere to stand out.
Visitors will immerse themselves in a luminous glow, entering into a quiet dialogue with the space and creating a moment suspended between reality and dream. The installation does not intrude upon the site forcefully; instead, it reveals its mystery, working with darkness, reflection, distance and the natural movement of light and visitors.
BN Label (SK) is an informal collective of artists, lighting designers, programmers and graphic designers who have been directly or indirectly involved in Slovakia’s White Night festival since its very first edition in 2010. The festival brought them together and helped them discover that they could create exceptional work as a team. Although each member works independently on their own artworks and projects, once a year they join creative forces to produce site-specific installations for White Night, tailor-made for the city.
With a strong sense of detail, aesthetics and precision, as well as a love of music, Martin Gabčo uses audiovisual equipment as a means of creating atmosphere and conveying emotions to people.
BN Label – The Moon
Location: Lower courtyard of the castle – entrance route
For centuries, the Moon has watched over the stories of places and people, changing its shape and illuminating locations that we know very differently by day. At Trenčín Castle, it will appear on an unusual scale – as a seven-metre glowing object set within the historic surroundings.
The encounter between the ancient castle walls and this iconic celestial body creates a powerful contrast between the passage of time and the eternal rhythm of the universe. For a moment, the boundary between the earthly and the cosmic dissolves.
BN Label is an informal collective of artists, lighting designers, graphic designers and programmers who have been directly or indirectly involved in White Night since its first edition in 2010. The team is made up of people who met through the festival and discovered that together they could create exceptional things. Although each of them also works independently on their own artworks and projects, once a year they are brought together by their love and enthusiasm for White Night, for which they create joint site-specific installations tailored to the city.
Peter Vrábeľ – Andromeda
Location: Lower courtyard
We live in a universe that is infinite and seemingly chaotic, yet nevertheless unified. From galaxies to planets, stars and the smallest atomic entities, everything is interconnected.
The connection between body and soul, between the physical and provable and the abstract produced by our minds as something transcendent – this is the human being. Unified human consciousness is reflected in you, in your friend, in the tree opposite you or in a kindred spirit.
Peter Vrábeľ presents this unity of the universe in his site-specific light installation. Several hundred points of light, glowing like moonlight, are arranged seemingly without any rules or symmetry, creating the impression of a carpet of stars spread across the Earth.
Peter Vrábeľ is a Slovak visual artist focusing primarily on lighting design, technology and site-specific installations. He was a member of the Kassaboys art group as well as the Make Up Collective association.
Pavol Truben – Catch Them All!
Location: Cavalier and courtyard in the upper castle beneath Matthew’s Tower
Myths have played an important role throughout the history of every society. What role remains for them today, in a digital and post-truth era that is saturated with myths, half-truths and falsehoods?
The light-and-sound interventions of visual artist Pavol Truben bring the motif of mythological animal symbols into the present day. Rather than presenting them with the usual visual grandeur, however, he reduces them to simple forms and visual shorthand containing a subtly ironic commentary on the world we live in.
The works contain references to workplace burnout, toxic masculinity, the absence of authority, the loss of meaning in life, the endless cycle of consumerism and apathy towards problems whose solutions often create further problems.
Through major social themes, the project paradoxically opens up questions of personal experience, while also reminding us that every era struggles with its own challenges. Will we be able to overcome ours?
Pavol Truben (SK) is a visual artist and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, where he teaches drawing and marketing for artists. In his work, he addresses current social issues, which he seeks to reflect upon with perspective and a subtle dose of irony.
As he himself has discovered, he cannot limit himself to a single medium – he feels equally at home in drawing, printmaking, object art, spatial installation and light installation. In 2021, he received the NOVUM Foundation Award; in 2025, he won first place in the works on paper category at the Osten Biennial in Skopje; and he was a finalist for the Celeste Prize 2013 at Art Center Ex-Stabbia in Rome.
He exhibits actively, with more than 70 exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad listed in his CV. In 2025, he took part in the viennacontemporary art fair, represented by Station Gallery, and in 2023 he participated in the Nuit Blanche festival in Paris.
Marek Kvetan – Game Over
Location: Lapidarium
The underground spaces of Trenčín Castle will become the setting for an unexpected encounter between the past and the present.
In the site-specific intervention Game Over, Marek Kvetan will present the works Carpet, HOMO, Holiday Worker, Touch of the Creator, Reliquary and Reflector, which enter into both dialogue and contrast with the historic sculptures and objects around them.
The installation will also include an intervention involving sports balls, referring both to the importance of sport in the life of the city and to the symbolic conclusion of the European Capital of Culture Trenčín 2026 project.
The past, the present and the approaching end of an important chapter thus meet in a space that opens up new perspectives on the history and identity of the city.
Marek Kvetan is an established Slovak intermedia artist and lecturer who lives and works in Bratislava. In his practice, he transforms familiar objects and materials into unexpected artworks and installations in which everyday life meets luxury, banality meets monumentality, and beauty meets absurdity.
With irony and a strong sense of visual paradox, he disrupts established aesthetic conventions and alters the meanings of things we usually take for granted. He uses both traditional sculptural methods and digital technologies, and his works often balance humour, provocation and critical reflection on contemporary society.
Dusts Institute – HUSO HUSO
Location: Alluvial area of Orechovský Stream
The Váh River will once again encounter a creature that disappeared from its waters decades ago.
During White Night, the great sturgeon (Huso huso) will symbolically return to Trenčín – one of the largest fish species, which once migrated through Slovak waters and formed an important part of the local ecosystem not only ecologically, but also culturally and economically.
Its disappearance from this region is the result of major transformations and human interventions in river ecosystems, including intensive fishing, river regulation, the construction of dams and the resulting disruption of natural migration routes.
The monumental light object representing a juvenile fish – a species that can grow to seven metres in length and weigh more than two tonnes as an adult – becomes a symbol of ecological memory, linking past losses with the transformations rivers are undergoing today.
Exceptionally low water levels, further aggravated by climate change, are a visible sign of a changing ecosystem and an uncertain future. What kind of river do we want to preserve for future generations?
Dusts Institute (AT) is a research and community platform founded by Adam Hudec (SK), Duha Samir (DE, IQ) and Tomáš Tichomirov (CZ). It brings together architects, environmental activists and scientists who use interdisciplinary research and art to raise public awareness of environmental and sustainability issues.
Their activities include interactive installations in public space, workshops, performances and exhibitions. The institute also develops educational programmes and initiatives that connect artists and researchers with the aim of strengthening environmental literacy and encouraging the wider public to take an active role in protecting the planet.
Atelier Meter – Magical Forest
Location: Cannon Bastion
Step into a utopian microcosm!
Deep inside the castle, a Magical Forest will emerge – a site-specific installation conceived by Monika Juríková and Peter Pozník of Atelier Meter.
The work draws on the aesthetics of a fairy-tale utopia and soft inflatable forms, inviting visitors to meet beneath the shade of pink trees. Reaching heights of up to four metres, these trees transform the castle interior into a mythological forest where all of us can imagine ourselves as mysterious creatures and look at the world with optimistic wonder.
At the same time, however, the work reminds us that a space filled with artificially created trees can remain playful and entertaining only as long as we still have enough real greenery around us…
Atelier Meter (SK) is the joint creative brand of Monika Juríková and Peter Pozník. Both studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Their work focuses on graphic design, typography and visual art.
Roman Mackovič & Antonín Kindl – Rotoscope
The castle will come alive with the futuristic aesthetics of a kinetic light object by Slovak visual artist Roman Mackovič and Czech artist Antonín Kindl.
The rotating structure of their collaborative work Rotoscope creates captivating light patterns accompanied by sound generated live. Thanks to the hypnotic dynamics of the neon rotation, visitors can simply observe the ever-changing audiovisual composition and allow themselves to be carried away by it.
Roman Mackovič is a visual artist, designer and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (MediaLab*, Digital Arts). His work focuses on post-digital art and physical computing – the creation of physical objects with digital properties.
He creates interactive physical objects and installations that invite viewers to participate, touch and influence the artwork. As a lecturer, he teaches artists and designers the fundamentals of electronics, microcontroller programming and multimedia work.
Antonín Kindl works in the field of new media art. He creates custom electronic systems that perceive and interpret their environment, transforming machines into organisms that observe, respond and sometimes make mistakes.
His work includes interactive installations, kinetic sculptures and robotic systems.
