Group exhibition By the Way Important

09 June 2025 > 27 June 2025 You are kindly invited to the opening of the group exhibition of students of Academy of Fine Arts and Design, "By the Way Important", on Monday, 9 June, at 7 pm, at Alkatraz Gallery, ACC Metelkova mesto. The exhibition features Kalina Naskovski Perne & Kristian Župan, the BRAVO collective (Pika Basaj, Ana and Neža Urbiha), Klara Kracina and Vita Eva Wesseisen. The project is a part of Empowernemt of Young Artists unit that is carried out in coproduction with Academy of Fine Arts and Design of Univrsity of Ljubljana.

Kalina Naskovski Perne & Kristian Župan, BRAVO collective (Pika Basaj, Ana and Neža Urbiha), Klara Kracina, Vita Eva Wesseisen

The Alkatraz Gallery has been continuously collaborating with the youngest generation of artists who study at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. We see the artworks that comprise this year's exhibition of the Academy's students as an opportunity to view some of the images of our time and place that are portrayed in the works of young artists who, although they do not aspire to tell universal or ambitious stories, (paradoxically) reveal a number of important ideas about the moods and values of contemporaneity. In the exhibition, we see everyday props, trivial objects, references to internal stories, associations and jokes. Their spirit is poetically described by Olja Simčić Jerele: The fog of repetition. My life. Same route, same bus, same job, same uni. I wade through it, with horse blinkers on.¹ The focus, which revolves around banal routines and repetitive stories, should not deceive us. Although we will not see loud demands for a fairer order of things in the exhibition, this does not mean that the young artists are only absorbed in their intimate worlds. On the contrary: there is no shortage of views that reflect a unique, critical view of reality, which does indeed use the locality of subjective experience as a starting point, but which develops into an indirect rebellion that is not lacking in humour and irony.

Klara Kracina holds a mirror up to the environment in which the photographs were taken in her series People You May Know (2024), which is a peculiar combination of a homage and a photo archive of the Facebook page of the Africa Trebnje discotheque, and consists of a spatial installation, monotypes and oil on canvas paintings. The Alkatraz Gallery features her monotypes and a spatial installation that can exist on their own, but, simultaneously, form a dialogue with the painting work of the series, which is not included in the exhibition. In the works of art we see questionable aesthetic choices, modes of self-presentation, methods of relaxation and leisure, as well as honest moments of unbridled passion that provoke nostalgic irony. The archival element of observation through an anthropological lens is reminiscent of the artist's initiative of collecting found notes from strangers (presented in the Zin Notes collection at DobraVaga Gallery) and other attempts to document phenomena of social life that may seem trivial and insignificant, but which the artist treats in a way that, through her characteristic humour, encourages the viewer to reflect on broader themes of collective memory and national consciousness. Klara Kracina's placement is complemented by the installation Bar Table (2025), which evokes for the visitor the ghost of parties and their own questionable decisions under the influence of intoxicating substances from her personal history. Thus, in one moment, in a monumental way, immortalised in a painting, graphic or installation work, the artist points out something that could provoke mockery in the viewer, and in the next moment we, as the viewers, have already connected what we have seen with our own experiences and realised that the joke is actually a joke at our expense and that we are not so different as individuals.

The representatives of the BRAVO collective (Ana Urbiha, Neža Urbiha, Pika Basaj) also draw inspiration from everyday life. Their non-glamorous sculptures act as a visually powerful counterpoint to the content of reality, which is unexciting: food and drink, pills, clothes, animal and human masks. The artists use the manufactured objects or sculptures in scenographic sequences in order to create fictional, humorous stories that reflect their close interconnectedness. As viewers, observing their playful experiments, we perceive an implicit emotional undertone that is tied to their relationships. The objects are part of a banal routine, but they have an auto-ironic connotation, because through ingenious inserts, such as, for instance, the naming of newly invented pills (The Go Berserk Pills, part of the project To Withdraw (2022)), they bring the viewer closer to their mutually developed world of fiction, which is, at the same time, questioned and compared to the greyness of everyday life. An original way of observing the interaction and fusion of identities and interpersonal dynamics through experimentation with the potentiality of the medium itself also incidentally brings an honest portrait of the time and space occupied by the artworks with the bare reality of everyday life, without the filter of sentimentality or aestheticization.

Vita Eva Weisseisen's installation Dear Diary (2023-2025), assembled on recycled metal plates, is formed from a multitude of objects: spontaneous drawings, stickers, photographs and her own writings, combining personal references and mass culture contexts. In this way, the objects are created as a kind of palimpsest of contemporary times, which the artist sees as modelled on places in public space that are dedicated to posters, whose parts overlap each other, thus forming a different message, both on a visual and on a contextual level. The project also includes a zine that shows her years of work in the field of drawing, which is the medium through which she processes her memories, expresses her standpoints and gives space to her dreams. Dear Diary is a collage of reflections and mental associations on the contexts of everyday life, which leads the artist to develop her own thoughts: it is a platform that allows her to move from the modest multifaceted space of developing her own expression to the development of her own autonomy. This is reflected through reflections which, as she puts it, are a form of rebellion, 'because they allow her to express herself as she wants', ² but which, otherwise, encompass broader themes about the nature of art and its role in the context of social order, conceiving revolutionary ideas of a better future and creating utopias.

Natural StupidyGPT (2024-2025) project by Kristian Župan and Kalina Naskovski Perne is a humorous response to the spectacular breakthrough of artificial intelligence into everyday life. In contrast to sophisticated AI technology, the authors' art object, which represents the phenomenon of natural non-intelligence, is created from simple, recycled material – a cardboard box, which represents the frame of a computer, into the slot of which visitors insert templates of generated images, which are then produced, i.e. drawn, in a completely analogous way by the artists, which will take place at the opening of the exhibition. The visitor will keep the drawing, whilst the placement will be decorated with scanned images of the resulting drawings. The work is reminiscent of Tomaž Furlan's grotesque devices, created in the Wear series, with which the artist drew attention to the role of technology in shaping behavioural patterns and changing interpersonal relationships. Kristian Župan's and Kalina Naskovski Perne's absurd machine can be seen in the same light of a socially critical voice, which, in an ironic way, draws attention to human activity in the age of increased automation of information delivery and generation of content, which we take in without any real critical reflection,³ regardless of the fact that it is an important part of the daily routine of the individual, thus turning the individual into a passive recipient of information processed according to a certain algorithm. At the same time, the artists highlight another very important component: the value and power that lies in human work and reflection.

The works on display reflect fragments of the spirit of the time to which we are both attached and trapped. Its positive and negative qualities are revealed by the artists in their own unique approaches, in some moments uplifting it, in others questioning it. Their works subtly but effectively reveal that the big picture is never black and white, but rather an inseparable conglomerate of confusion. The works of art do not contain a direct critique of contemporaneity, but instead an invitation to reflect on where we stand, what our values are, what it is that we do not really need, and where the limits of our reality lie. As such, while subtly weighing the contrasts of our lives, they offer a profound philosophical existential reflection of life itself, and, in so doing, establish themselves as meaningful and relevant works of art.

Sebastian Krawczyk, Ana Grobler

Pika Basaj, Ana Urbiha and Neža Urbiha work as the BRAVO collective. All of them are students of the Master's programmes at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana; Neža and Pika in department of Painting, and Ana in department of Conservation and Restoration. In their previous exhibitions, they have explored close friendships, which often extend to an irrational dimension, where collectively created fiction co-shapes real
life. These themes were touched upon in the exhibition titled Searching for Lost Closeness in 2020 at the Old Post Office in Kranj, From the Canvas, Out as part of the Turbo Gallery project of TrainStation SubArt (2021), with the project To Withdraw at the group exhibition of the Fin de Siecle VI series at the Layer House in Kranj (2023) and in the exhibition Parkplac
In the Mala Galerija Banke Slovenije (2024). They also collaborated in the making of the set design for the dance performance by the Nest Collective, Anthology of a Scream: Surprise Bag (2024).

Klara Kracina (1999, Ljubljana) graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2022 and is currently completing her MA in painting. Her areas of independent work include painting, printmaking, drawing, comics and installation art. In her individual work she deals with personal issues of identity, national consciousness and collective nostalgia, but she also raises socially critical issues, which she addresses in her work through humour and cynicism. So far, she has had six solo exhibitions, including at Media Nox Gallery, Exarte, and Dobra Vaga Gallery. She has also participated in several group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad, including at Equrna Gallery, Škuc Gallery, the Ljubljana City Hall, Mala galerija BS, at the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts at MGLC, and at the OHOHO Festival in Zagreb.

Kalina Naskovski Perne (2003) is a visual artist working primarily in the fields of painting and printmaking. She is currently completing her undergraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (UL ALUO), majoring in Painting. She has exhibited in three group exhibitions at DobraVaga Gallery: Fresh Fish #novulov (2024), Fresh Fish Graphics (2024) and Appointment 9.0 (2025). As part of the Zine Vitrine programme, she presented the zine SpranGPT at DobraVaga in 2025, together with artist Kristian Župan. In addition, she participated in the group exhibition of students of painting of the Academy of Fine Ars and Design UL Although! In the Mala galerija Banke Slovenija (2025) and in the 14th IMPORT/EXPORT Graphic Bielan in Poznan, Poland (2025).

Kristian Župan (1998) is a visual artist primarily working in painting and printmaking. He is currently completing the third (final) year of his undergraduate studies in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. To date, he has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Fresh Fish at DobraVaga Gallery, where he was recognized as one of the promising young printmakers, and in the Coastal Galleries of Piran as a prizewinner of the 59th Ex-tempore Painting Competition. He has also exhibited at Ljubljana Castle and the Mala Galerija Banke Slovenija. In April 2025, he took part in the international exhibition Import–Export in Poland alongside printmaking professors from the Academy. With an artist’s book – a zine (in collaboration with Kalina Naskovski Perne), he was selected through the international Zine Vitrine open call at DobraVaga.

Vita Eva Weisseisen (1999) is an intermedia artist, designer and DJ. She graduated in sculpture (BA) from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2022, where she is currently completing her MA in video, animation and new media. Her fields of work and activity are music, intermedia art and film, as well as the organisation of cultural-artistic and musical events. She is co-founder and former member of the collective Podmladek and member of the queer collective Ustanova. Her works regularly accompany personal confessions, experiences and stream of consciousness. In her art, she resists hopelessness and systemic repression by returning to beauty, emotionality and sensuality - to a primal expression that becomes an act of rebellion in times of distress. It is in this departure from everyday hopelessness and activist urgency that lies the critique of a system that seeks to destroy what makes us human - memory, imagination, joy and hope. She has exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions, and regularly presents her films at Slovenian and international film festivals.

Curated by: Ana Grobler, Sebastian Krawczyk
Expert advice: Lučka Zajc
Translation: Ana Makuc
Proof-reading: Sonja Benčina
Photo of the exhibition: Nada Žgank
Production: KUD Mreža
Coproduction: Acadamy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana
Support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City Council Ljubljana