Kiki Omerzel: Black Book

20 December 2012 > 01 February 2013 You are kindly invited to the opening of exhibition Black Book by Kiki Omerzel. The opening will take place in Alkatraz Gallery on Thursday 20th December at 8 pm.

Black book

The First
I have been creating in different media for the last 25 years. They have all affected me and have become inseparable part of my work. I am not a painter, illustrator or conceptual artist ... my medium is everything I can use; however lately these have been painting and illustration in the sense of enlightening the reality – merely a tool/expression I use in a given moment. A clear goal is very important in communication as it enables the recipient to receive the message in the intended form, not subjectively and full of individual interpretations.

The Second
I am telling a story with visual language and I am researching it to deepen the understanding of visual communication, to understand traditional cultures and the world of contemporary art through the theory of visual language, semiotics and philosophy.

Visual reading is basically determined by three kinds of reading:
first
it is universal and the same for all human beings,
second
it is determined by one’s birth place and heritage; something we carry with us all our life and usually use it completely by intuition, unaware of it, because we learned those things in our childhood,
third
it is contemporary, social, global and ever changing, especially with the development of new media.

In the search for the first, second and third, I am looking into different cultures, styles and techniques (ranging from the Japanese comics, conceptual art, renaissance paintings, Sahara cave art, Mayan sculpture to philosophical and mystical books and practical observation of people’s behavior and creativity) to understand the differences between east and west as well as the past and present.

The Third
Long time ago I read ‘The Seven Beauties’, an ancient Persian story written by Nizami Ganjavi in 1197, adventures of Bahram Gur, a prince destined to become the ruler of the world. This ancient Persian poem speaks about the beginning of adulthood and the first steps into our search of the ultimate love and devotion. It is one of basic stories for the understanding of the human nature. ‘The Seven Beauties’ is a literary classic in both, the East and West - an erotic allegory of the quest for human perfection steeped in numerology, geometry, astrology and color symbolism. The story that does not stem from the mind, but from beyond, from a conscious reality.

The Fourth
I began with black.
Black is the color of death as well as the color of a new beginning.
Black is in the beginning of all things. We all came from darkness and we all search the light we remember.

The Fifth
In painting and graphic novel I am converting this ancient tale from India into contemporary life and form ... a mixture of old and new, here and there, low and high, dark and shiny.

- old Indian and Arabic miniatures and illuminations with modern visual storytelling in a form of graphic book and series of paintings,
- the renaissance sfumato with the techniques of old eastern miniatures,
- western symbolism with eastern environment and atmospheric way of story-presentation,
- western iconography with eastern ornament,
- different materials (aluminum, wood and iron) with different techniques (gold leaf, acrylic and ink)
- musical composition with intuition

The Sixth
Everything in the pictures has a meaning and is there on purpose of communication.

The Seventh
Black book is the first in the series of seven: black, yellow, green, red, turquoise, sandal and white. Each color has its own meaning and its own story. But the first one is black.
Black for dead.
Black for new beginning.
Black for patience.
Black for unknown.
Black for fear.
Black for deep unconsciousness.
Black for silence.
Black for ... the last.

Kiki Omerzel

Kiki Omerzel has been operating/working in Ljubljana for several years. In 1997 she graduated in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and enrolled at the post-graduate level of sculpting with prof.Barši at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. Since 1994 until now she has participated at various group and solo exhibitions (Urbanarija – Soros Centre in Ljubljana., Magdalenska mreža – Maribor, Break 21, Grad Mala Loka, Lamutova galerija – Kostanjevica, P74 – Ljubljana, Likovni salon Celje, Jakopič Gallery – Ljubljana). She lectures in the subjects of illustration and visual communication at the Academy of Design as well as at VIST (Higher School of Applied Sciences, at the Photography department. Her projects are varied and include design, illustration, painting and performance.

Photo: Ana Grobler & Nevena Aleksovski