Exhibitions in its own galleries and exhibitions intended to be presented abroad have been part of ÚĽUV permanent cultural and promotional activities for six decades now. Several of ÚĽUV’s events are repeated regularly.
For twenty years, we have been organising in Bratislava a festival of traditional crafts and folk production called ÚĽUV Craftsmen Days. Every two years, ÚĽUV hosts competitions for young professional designers and for pupils of primary schools and art schools.
The main characteristic of wooden products from the village of Kyjatice is their unique decoration, consisting of variations of engraved ornamentations. It is mostly strikingly represented today by Kyjatice toys, although at the beginning of the 19th century, the inhabitants of this village were making mainly furniture out of beech wood, and toys were just a side range.
In 2023, ÚĽUV presents natural materials for weaving in traditional and contemporary craft as well as design in its year-round activities. The ambition of the new exhibition at the ÚĽUV Gallery in Bratislava, which continues the thematic cycle Tradition Untraditionally, is to show visitors the diversity and functionality of the works of master craftsmen, designers and students.
The “Design by Nature“ exhibition is another showcase of the current semester works of the students of the Innovation Studio in the premises of the ÚĽUV Regional Crafts Centre in Košice. Studio Innovation was founded in 2005 by Tibor Uhrín and operates within the Department of Design of the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University in Košice (Faculty of Arts TUKE).
The “Rings in Water” competition is organized bi-yearly by ÚĽUV. The goal is to initiate and support the creation of new designer products inspired by traditional craft. It develops a dialogue about traditional values, how they are safeguarded and how they appear in contemporary craft, applied art and design.
The first part of ÚĽUV’s new exhibition cycle - “Tradition – Untraditionally” - presents wood in contexts that have never been seen before. Design from museum collections to contemporary works looking towards the future. The exhibition is open to the public from January 20 th to November 4th 2022 in the ÚĽUV Gallery at Obchodná 64 in Bratislava.
