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No Loitering Today, the Cataclysm Is Nearby – group exhibition by the students of ALUO.

03 June 2021 > 22 June 2021 Kindly invited to the group exhibition "No Loitering Today, the Cataclysm Is Nearby" by Ajda Kadunc, Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt, Jernej Šimec, Monika Plemen and Zdenka Pandžić. The exhibition will be open between 3 and 22 June 2021. It is a part of "Empowerment of Young Artists" gallery programme.

Participating artists:
Ajda Kadunc, Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt, Jernej Šimec, Monika Plemen & Zdenka Pandžić.

Meaningfulness, rather than numerousness, was the guiding principle for the selection of works for the group exhibition of students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana (ALUO UL), which takes place biennially in the Alkatraz Gallery. The group exhibition is co-produced by the ALUO UL and features the works of Ajda Kadunc, Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt, Jernej Šimec, Monika Plemen and Zdenka Pandžić. The title of the exhibition is a coinage, adapted from the names of two works of art, which can be viewed at the Alktraz Gallery. No loitering today, the cataclysm is nearby sums the everyday life of the past year or our (new) reality very well. It is a collective experience that everyone deals with in their own way. The exhibited works of art mostly belong to the mentioned time frame, but at the same time, they work outside of it.

A painter, Ajda Kadunc, who in her creative work often combines different materials and means of expressions, presents herself with a spatial installation. She employs techniques marked by spontaneity that are close to surrealistic approaches in art. Absurdity, nonsense and the intangibility of meaning, however, represent the essence that is established in dialogue between individual objects and paintings. She is interested in emerging relationships that are not subdued to conventions and are freed of patterns that characterise our perception in a materialistically and rationalistically oriented reality. It is a response to excessive objectification of not only objects, animals, but also interpersonal relationships. With the disorder that occurs when our mind collides with the unrecognisable, strange, it tries to shake our perception and provide the conditions for building a more authentic relationship towards the animate and inanimate or a different contact with everything that surrounds us: beyond meaning and reason, in the direction of logic dictated by intuition.

With the work titled Her, Monika Plemen explores the developing relationship between herself – an artist and an object – a copper plate as a substitute for a mobile phone. Although it is not a useful object, she adopted the plate to such an extent that before the end of the project, she named it Her. In her artistic creation, the artist derives mostly from graphic techniques, whereas her practice is, to a large extent, marked by processuality in connection with recording everyday moments. The final outcome of almost two weeks of coexistence with the plate is an audio book that records the allotted period of time. The cover of the book shows an empty matrix, the situation before the start of the artistic action, while the last page is the final print of the plate in the etching technique, which contains traces of thirteen days. Thus, the visual part is comprised of various prints of scratches and other blows that were created by chance, whereas the content presents a diary of contemplation on the plate, which can be read aloud. The other work with which Monika Plemen participates at the exhibition is a graphic, Forms of Nature, stimulated by the visuality of a wrinkled sheet, of which she became especially aware during one of the lockdowns.

Among the darker works that address the present is the piece Considering that the Cataclysm is Today of a painter, Zdenka Pandžić. The artist deals with images associated with the topic of apocalypse, based predominantly on the last book of the New Testament, Revelations. Among the depictions, we find images of four horsemen of apocalypse, various beasts and mythological creatures. In this set of works of art, she combines influences from traditional religious painting with more modern forms of expressions in her own way. What is interesting is the choice of completely banal materials for the portrayal of biblical motifs. For the exhibited painting, for instance, she used a PVC floor mat and textile colours. Topics related to the predictions of the end of the world are, historically speaking, especially popular in times of major natural catastrophes and epidemics. In the process of making sense of hard times, there is doubtlessly the possibility of the increase of the irrational. Even though the topic is associated with anxiety and fear, Zdenka Pandžić balances this with a certain measure of humour and playfulness.

Jernej Šimec opens the video entitled Memory Induced with the blueness of the water and a distorted voice of a narrator, who, thinking about his own transience, opens up the field of the existential. The work of art open to interpretation, at its core, juxtaposes the images of the city and nature. His work can be read very concretely, tied to a particular moment and place. Since the video was made in Warsaw during a rather turbulent period, it comes as no surprise that it captures the footage of mass protests against further violations of human rights (of women).  On the other hand, in his photographic practice, Jernej Šimec often questions the relations between people in a more general way, and he is also interested in humans' attitude towards nature, which is twofold. On one side, there are humans as part of nature, whilst on the other, there is humans' destructive attitude towards nature. The undertone with which the narrator concludes the video is grim, although it allows for the possibility of more favourable unravelling of events.

The piece No Loitering is a commentary on the unfriendliness and inaccessibility of urban cities, highlighting the increasingly present 'hostile architecture', designed to deter the retention of unwanted city dwellers, often as an obstacle to sleep of the homeless people and refugees. With interventions into the city, Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt temporarily corrects the deliberate 'mistakes' of such an architecture and, in this way, highlights how problematic they are as well as questions the future of the public space more broadly. At the exhibition, we can see objects, that is, some kind of negatives, created during the first implementation of the project in Linz.

The exhibition of young artists implicitly alludes to the presence of optimism, positive energy, and pleasures of carefree creative activity, although the reality of the artists in fact paints a rather different picture. Cataclysms to which the exhibited works of art directly or indirectly refer to might indeed be built from cheap materials that were produced by poorly paid workers in remote parts of the world, yet this does not mean that the threat is less real or unrelated to our situation. The exhibition No loitering today, the cataclysm is nearby urges the search for new meanings, beyond established logical paradigms that offer no tangible answers. Artists encourage us to question the mechanisms that have enabled people to process shocking feelings in historically difficult times, or to question the solutions that determine how to define the right to coexist in an urban environment or, more broadly, in the context of the planet.

Anabel Černohorski, Sebastian Krawczyk, Ana Grobler


 

As in previous years, this year, after the end of the group exhibition, we will select one student, who will be able to further collaborate in the form of a solo exhibition and other forms of presentations of their artistic practice next year.

 

Gala Alica Ostan Ožban mostly deals with public space and contemporary socio-political topics. Currently, she is completing her undergraduate studies in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (ALUO UL). She also studied at the University for Art and Design in Linz. She participated in group exhibitions, such as The Maybe Date in Graz Skulpturpark (Graz, 2020), Stičišče in Town Hall (Ljubljana, 2019) and Brstišče, which was part of the project Švicarija: Community, Art and Nature in Švicarija Creative Centre, International Centre of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana, 2018). She is currently dealing with a balcony as a replacement public space at the time of the epidemic.

 Jernej Šimec (1997) is a final-year undergraduate student of photography at ALUO UL. Last year, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw as part of Erasmus+ programme, where he also attended the workshop called Art Made by Walking. In his works, he mainly deals with humans' attitude towards nature, which he portrays as either idealistically connected or disconnected by questioning their boundaries. His work of art was featured at the following exhibitions: Create a Work of Art that Is Not Yours (Ljubljana, 2019), Send Nudes (Ljubljana, 2019), Others Swim in Rivers (Ljubljana, 2019), What the Hell Is Going On? (Warsaw, 2020), Robi się gorąco (Warsaw, 2021).

Ajda Kadunc (1995) graduated from ALUO UL, in 2018, where she is completing her master's degree in painting. In 2020, as part of Erasmus+ programme, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. She has participated in as such group exhibitions as SO3EO1 in the gallery 7069 (Cerkno, 2019) and at two exhibitions of Fresh Fish in Dobra Vaga (2020), where she presented herself with a solo exhibition titled Never Nothing last year. In her artistic practice, she explores possibilities of new social orders and communication through nonsense, which she treats as a fresh space for contemplation.

Zdenka Pandžić (1998) is a final-year undergraduate student of painting at ALUO UL. She has participated in group exhibitions, such as No White Linen in the Small Gallery of Bank of Slovenia, and with an artistic intervention at the exhibition titled The Horn of History in ŠKUC Gallery. She has also participated in the projects such as the publication of a journal of contributions of a research and international exhibiting project The Horn of History: Cosmetics in Society and Time. Currently, she deals with the theme of apocalypse and the book of Revelations in her artistic practice.

Monika Plemen (1994) completed her undergraduate studies in art pedagogy under mentorship of MA Anja Jerčič Jakob. She is continuing her master's studies at ALUO UL (major: graphics). In the academic year 2019/2020, she studied at Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein in Germany. Her solo exhibitions include Body Distortion (Odprto obrobje Gallery, MIKK Murska Sobota, 2020, and artKIT, Kibla, Maribor, 2021) and Metamorphoses (Ravne Gallery, Ravne na Koroškem, 2020). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad. In her artistic creation, she mainly employs graphic techniques, but at same time, she also tests other media of expression, such as objects and the production of audio art books.

Photographies of the exhibition: Nada Žgank.

Production: KUD Mreža/ Galerija Alkatraz and Academy for Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana.

Programme of the Alkatraz Gallery is supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and City Council Ljubljana - Department for Culture.



Zdenka Pandžič, Considering that the Cataclysm is Today, 2020 Zdenka Pandžič, Considering that the Cataclysm is Today, 2020 Monika Plemen, Forms of Nature, 2020 Monika Plemen, HER, 2020 Monika Plemen, HER, 2020 Jernej Šimec, Memory induced, 2020 Jernej Šimec, Memory induced, 2020 Jernej Šimec, Memory induced, 2020 Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt, No Loitering, 2019 Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt, No Loitering, 2019 Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt, No Loitering, 2019 Ajda Kadunc, Untitled (detail), 2021 Ajda Kadunc, It's beautiful yet it hurts so bad,2020