Do you know the buildings you pass every day? What emotions and memories does Brutalist architecture evoke in you?
Between 2025 and 2026, Olja Triaška Štefanovič, a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, photographed Brutalist buildings across the Trenčín Region. Through her photographs, she draws attention to places and buildings that often remain overlooked by the public, revealing their values, stories and potential while exploring new ways of interpreting them.
The photographic series will be presented in the exhibition Feeling the Brutal, which has a scenographic, almost theatrical character. Photography is combined with stage design and a sound installation. The artist works with detail and repetition within a spatial installation created by the exhibition architect Katarína Plačková. The exhibition invites visitors to reflect on their own emotions, memories and personal associations connected with architecture – such as nostalgia, childhood, socialism or inspiration, as well as ambivalent and critical feelings.
The exhibition is complemented by Brutally Sweet, a project by visual artist Viera Levitt (SK/USA), whose research and exhibitions often connect American Brutalism with modern architecture in Central Europe. In the Brutally Sweet series, she uses sweetness to soften the often harsh and cold perception of mid-20th-century concrete architecture. Levitt documents the physical act of pouring honey and molasses over the heavy, geometric surfaces of buildings, creating a striking contrast between industrial permanence and organic, fluid decay.
Exhibition opening: 15 October 2026 at 17:00, Miloš Alexander Bazovský Gallery (GMAB) in Trenčín, free admission
Exhibition dates: 15 October 2026 – 30 January 2027
Artists: Olja Triaška Štefanovič, Viera Levitt
Curators: Radka Nedomová, Alexander Topilin
Exhibition architecture: Katarína Plačková
Admission to the exhibition is available during GMAB opening hours:
Monday – closed
Tuesday – Friday: 9:00 – 17:00
Saturday – Sunday: 10:00 – 17:00
The exhibition is part of the Sensitively on Brutalism project, which focuses on architecture, urbanism and public space. It reflects on the radical transformation of cities associated with utopian visions of urban planning, the demolition of historic city centres, and the construction of buildings in the styles of Brutalism, Modernism, Late Modernism and Postmodernism.
Other activities taking place in 2026 include six temporary installations by international artists in different parts of Trenčín and the Brutal Symposium, taking place on 9 October at the ODA building. The Sensitively on Brutalism project is led by the Trenčín-based civic association Projekt HLAVA 5.
More information about the project is available at: sensitivelyonbrutalism.eu.
