Opening hours:
Monday - Friday:12am - 6pm
Monday - Friday:12am - 6pm
08 July 2010 > 18 July 2010 Exhibition will open on 8th of July at 9pm in Alkatraz gallery and will last until 18th of July
Mass media and popular culture represent the main agents influencing the younger generation of artists. Many of them have changed the classical forms of expression in visual arts. Creating, they use computer software and video, or stepping into the realm of theory and visual arts related fields when transforming the space and time.
Bogataj’s authorial style is dedicated to the technology of an adjusted view of the world, this time to a more dynamic than static image of the world. The artist is focused on the quest for the forms within the sculptural métier. Sculpturing is an authorial and subjective medium, traversing between various disciplines and expertise among the rational, physical and sensual. In its developmental phase from the contrapposto onwards it has aspired, and been searching for incessant traversing from a strictly material and static into a de-material and dynamic. The spatial installation Dancing Venus belongs to the sculptural objects where the artist accentuates the oscillation or the movement of sculptural bodies, forming the wholeness of the construction. The object is composed of plastic litter bags, playing the main role of the material the sculptural construction consists of. The outer sides of the object form a cube, leaving the inside of the object hollow. The dichotomy between the hollow inside - the de-material - and the filled outside as the material, emphasises the lightweight and translucency of the cube sides, causes visual and spatial distortions. The sound invested into the composition has been created with the help of Michel Créïs, additionally softens the clearly outlined composition of the cube. The audio components are represented by the stretching and transformation of the litter bags with the aid of natural forces in a somewhat timeless space.
»The statue is anything that an artist names or designates as a sculpture. And the sculpting material is anything that we use to make a sculpture (all the substances and materials: metal, stone, clay, wood, paper, cardboard, plastic, text, photography/photograph, video, industrial or natural materials, waste as well as »ready made« objects… or a combination of various materials and various techniques and technologies).«[*]
The sculptural construction Dancing Venus of Rok Bogataj steps away from the classical principle of seeing a sculptural work: by its placement into the space, the spatial perception of systems and their appearance is, in its case, additionally emphasised. Dancing Venus is an analytically thought out pendent spatial structure, flirting with the constructional tendencies. The sculpted bodies are integrated into the space, establishing a dialogue, communication and exchange with it. The relationship is constructed thoughtfully, the setting is adjusted to the specificities of the given space, for the space is not a passive cloak around an isolated object, but integrates it as a consistent part of the design and action method. The statue is not physically and symbolically isolated from the world outside, in this case the gallery space.
Jadranka Ljubičič
