“In Stano Filko’s (1937–2015) spectrum, the colour blue represents the cosmological region, or space. It is also the space between heaven and earth, between the earthly life (physic, biologic) and pure transparent spirituality (metaphysic, the spiritual). The author describes a relatively broad scale of visual works from this area as the 4th dimension. Indeed, it dominates his early production from the period of the second half of the 60s. The initially robust mirrored environments from the end of this decade are replaced by smaller visual forms of concepts and prints, while the conceptual continuity remains. “In the second half of this decade he produced several ambitious environments on the theme of the cosmos and universe, which from the conceptual perspective are later proven to have been decisive. The ideal of a total fusion of life and art as one of the central premises of conceptual art will also be, for Filko, both the source as well as the goal of art, not only on the level of themes or ideas, but simultaneously as their visual creation in time.”

Amongst the first works which contain the theme of the cosmos, and which more or less settles as a particular segment of Filko’s practice, is the now well-known setting Universal Environment (1966–67). As the artist describes in his first samizdat catalogue of 1971: “A tri-chandelier (white, red and blue) revolves in the centre of the environment, giving the entire space a moving and colourful, cosmic ray-light.” While in this work Filko fitted the cosmos into a broader iconographic structure in an effort to produce an environment as a consequential-universal whole in existence, in Cosmos (1968) he becomes far more straight forward and thematically precise. In 1969, “Filko exhibited at the VI Biennale in Paris with Cosmos: with an inflatable sphere-shaped tent, whose internal walls displayed, with the help of projected documents, the main stages of the cosmic adventure.”

Nina Vrbanova