Julius Koller. U.F.O.-naut J.K.

Július Koller posited everyday life as art—and art as a token of resistance. With wit and irony, the artist challenged the rules of Czechoslovakia’s authoritarian communist regime.

Absurd actions, simple gestures, powerful effect

The exhibition gathers central works by Koller from the Generali Foundation Collection—Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, including the legendary long-term series U.F.O.-naut J.K. (U.F.O.). Spanning over thirty-five years, the work is composed of one symbolic self-portrait per year.

Koller also garnered attention with his unusual artistic actions—what he called Anti-Happenings. Held both in private and in public settings, they were typically entertaining and often laced with irony.

Július Koller was born in Piešťany, in today’s Slovakia, in 1939. He died in Bratislava in 2007. In the 1970s, he started using the abbreviation “U.F.O.” One of its meanings is universal-cultural futurological operations, a reference to the artist’s effort to signal resistance to the general paralysis of society during the period of communist “normalization.” Koller ranks among the most prominent voices of the dissident Slovakian arts scene of the 1960s.