co-operation: Ewa Gorzadek
Curator: Nevenka Sivavec
co-operation: Ewa Gorzadek
I would neither like to present the exhibition of the three Slovenian artists in Warsaw as
the currently typical Slovenian visual production nor the concept of these installations tries
to present some kind of the essence of the Slovenian artistic identity.
Nevertheless, Marko A. Kovacic, Damjan Kracina and Franc Purg were not chosen by
coincidence. The link between them is their clear, onto the onlooker directly addressed artistic
statement which the Slovenian art with their cautious, moderate and unproblemtic modernism
on one hand and obsessive focusing on models of highly modernistic visual practises on the other
hand, was constantly trying to avoid. Kovacic, Kracina and Purg react with their emotional and
social engagement on different types of cultural violence and they are trying to set themselves
free of ideological and religious symbols and theirs contexts of time, space and the sacred.
The three selected artists are sculptors who are digressing from the tradition of the Slovenian
sculpture, generally marked by a certain formalism. Their digression is implied in the social statement, i.e. in the engagement with contexts deriving from things, places and ideologies people live in and with. For the three artists we can also say that they are all marked by unfaithfulness to the modernist practices and not considering the pure sculptural categories. Their characteristics are the turn for the personal, which has until recently been more exception to the rule. At the moment the Slovenian artistic scene is devoting credibility to the authors who merge historical and subjective allusions, who pervert the usual meanings with deconstructions, emotions and irony and with the models of manipulation which is ironically structured in the way used by the mass media.
Although there are three different authors from the three different places, they have besides the same starting point also the same idea in common, which is hidden behind the slightly poetic, slightly ironic and also a bit naive title of the exhibition. The title wants to be an illusion to the visual seduction of the onlooker, who can be caught between the optic scene productions by Marko Kovacic, to the shuddering of the onlooker at watching perverted religious symbols and symbols of the death, dealt with by Franc Purg, and to the manipulation of Damjan Kracina, ( http://lois.kud-fp.si/sou/kapelica/kracinatv ) shown in the parodic effect of the TV medium in connection with the thinking of death, which has become another medium of mass manipulation.
Hidden or direct manipulation with the onlooker, which is ironically and at the same time seriously implied in the title of the exhibition is therefore the main starting point for the common presentation of the three Slovenian sculptors.
Simultaneously, the title tells us about the different role of the curator who is like the above mentioned artists also marked by the turn for the personal that will be noticed mainly in the catalogue, accompanying the exhibition.
At the very end we can add that all three artists who are going to exhibit in Warsaw prepared their projects partly also being conscious that they are intended for the Polish audience. During their work they could not get rid of the feeling that this, at the moment still fictional audience must be in a way very specific. Therefore, the title of the exhibition is after all addressing right this audience.
1) Franc Purg
2) Damjan Kracina
3) Marko Kovacic
Photographs from the Galerija S.O.U. Kapelica, Ljubljana