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10 September 2025 > 01 October 2025 Kindly invited to the opening of Julij Borštnik's retrospective exhibition "Basic Bricks" on Wednesday, September 10, at 7 p.m. at the Alkatraz Gallery, ACC Metelkova mesto. The exhibition is part of the celebration of the 32nd anniversary of AKC Metelkova mesto.
The exhibition is a part of events of 32th Anniversary of ACC Metelkova mesto
Julij Borštnik's artistic practice is a rich intertwinement of theoretical reflection, field research and sculptural work. The result is not so much focused on aesthetic expression, but is rather a symbolic entity that invites reflection on ways of perception and open engagement with the world. It is precisely this desire to expand the boundaries of critical thinking and to establish art as a starting point for creating what is not taken for granted that marks Borštnik's work, which often thematises the relationships between economic explanations of the historical development of social processes and, through an in-depth understanding of these, sees the driving force in both art and science. To this end, he strives for plurality of thought and a profound understanding of the conceptual foundations on which the models of contemporary society are based. In doing so, he focuses on the original texts of economic classics and the broader social contexts in which these concepts are embedded.
The main focus of his projects, such as Phase Transitions, is on understanding historical moments when existing social models lose their functionality and new ones have not yet been established. Borštnik describes such periods as phase transitions – areas of social instability where the old order is collapsing and the new one is just taking shape. In this context, he sees the present moment as a potential turning point leading to one of two scenarios, namely: a slide into technofeudalism or a society of co-determination. In his work entitled Modern Projection and Postmodern Reality, Borštnik highlights the disruption of the parallelism between productivity growth and wage growth that occurred in the 1970s. In his work Basic Bricks 1, we encounter a decline in the profit rate at the end of the 1960s. In Phase Transitions 3D – From 1320 to Today, he highlights the 1960s and 1970s as a period marking the beginning of a failed transition to what he calls a society of co-determination. He is interested in the period from the 1960s to the early 1980s because, in his words, the trajectory broke down. Before that, in the middle of the 20th century, both productivity and wages grew steadily and evenly, which led to a reduction in the proportion of poor people and a narrowing of class differences.
According to the artist, art has a special role to play in such transitional periods: it is not merely a reflection of society, but rather it can become an active tool for recognizing possibilities that official discourses fail to perceive. In this context, Borštnik is not only a theorist, but also an active organizer and co-founder of autonomous institutional tools for artistic production. Between 2003 and 2019, he actively participated in establishing and managing residential and work spaces, such as the Art Centre in Goričko and Studio Asylum in Metelkova, as well as an art school in Nova Gorica. These spaces are a kind of platform for operating outside institutional pressures and as windows into more autonomous practices and horizontal connections. In this sense, the Future of Work1 project/portal is also important, which includes, among other things, a four-part on-line documentary in which Julij Borštnik, together with Abel Heijkamp, explores the growing uncertainties in the field of work and life in the Netherlands, Germany, Slovenia and Europe in general.
Julij Borštnik first presented his work at the Alkatraz Gallery in 2007 with his undergraduate thesis, in which he explores the role of art institutions in contemporary society by means of case studies. One of the case studies in question is the controversy surrounding the temporary rejection of the work Mandarin's Story at the exhibition of the winners of the 2005 Essl Award international competition at the Sammlung Essel in Vienna. He was invited to the exhibition as the winner of the first prize for Slovenia. With Mandarin's Story, which thematises the connection between the production of mandarins for the European market, EU migration policy and the food sales / distribution network, we also visited the Stanica art centre in Žilina, Slovakia, in 2007. In 2019, he held a solo exhibition at the Alkatraz Gallery, entitled Basic Bricks of Logic 1, based on a minimalist sculptural installation of four key curves of profit economy logic in two sets. The sets confront curves, as if drawn in the abstraction of the conceptual assumptions of profit logic without the limitations of the real world, with curves of actual practice, taken from statistics from the last seven decades. The art project presented the key elements of the logic that dominates and directs the economic and political environment in which we live in a generally understandable way, with a touch of humour. In 2022, the Cultural and Artistic Association Mreža co-produced his solo exhibition Phase Transition 1 at the Mikl House Gallery in Ribnica. The exhibition is a bold, insightful and innovative work that thematises the transitions between the fundamental political and economic principles of the organization of society and work, from one dominant logic to a new one. His work titled The Basic Bricks of Logic 1 clearly highlighted the fundamental building blocks of the profit economy paradigm, which determine the framework of the possible process of capital accumulation, as well as the contradictions that are inscribed in it and in which it repeatedly becomes entangled. His project Phase Transition 1 allowed for a view from an even greater distance. The artist placed the principles of economic organization under the historical prism of growth (and stagnation) in the productivity of work organization. In this way, he aimed to clarify the range of possible fundamental paradigms and how they fit or do not fit in with individual phases of productivity and transitions between them.
Julij Borštnik returns to the Alkatraz Gallery with a retrospective exhibition that offers an insight into his extensive artistic practice. The author is closely connected to the Metelkova scene – not only as an artist, but also as a long-time participant within the community, where he is active in its self-management. Borštnik's retrospective exhibition presents the development of his art within a space that allows him to create autonomously.
