We Want to be Free as the Fathers Were

9 September - 7 November 2010

Painting exhibitions are rare today.The exhibition presents eighteen Slovene artists from various generations, all of whom have been dealing with the following questions through their research of the painting medium: How does the contemporary media image of the world show itself in today’s painting? How do artists respond to the short-term view, television and internet collages? How do they understand the contemporary media landscape, its characteristics, operation and inclusion into the social microstructure?

Contributing artists are Viktor Bernik, BridA (Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica), Jure Cvitan, Ksenija Čerče, Jon Derganc, Mito Gegič, Bojan Gorenec, Boštjan Jurečič Vega, Žiga Kariž, Gorazd Krnc, Polona Maher, Arjan Pregl, Nina Slejko Bloom, Miha Štrukelj, Maruša Šuštar, Manja Vadla, Sašo Vrabič, Tanja Vujinović.


BridA, Mesarski most, 2010, acrylic on canvas

The 1990s saw a change in visual art as painting reacted strongly to image digitalisation, and the ‘pixellated’ images influenced even the abstract painting which was considered to be the showcase of modernism. In the mid 90s a generation of artists established themselves in Slovenia who understand painting as a screen and who thus adopted the formal image of the electronically and technologically mediated painting. At the break of the millennia painting became interesting due to its reaction to the flood of media images and the research of the characteristics of the new media in which these images appeared. Today the existence of mediatised images in painting is taken for granted. It is no longer enough for a painting to leave space for the reflection of the broader visual scope within society. The selection of paintings at the exhibition We Want to be Free as the Fathers Were researches the ways in which painting reacts to the broader visual scope at the current moment in time.


Arjan Pregl, Fan Art II., 2007, collage

The question of paintings that reflect the media image and that was posed already in the 1990s is today of greatest interest to the youngest generation of painters who are just leaving university and are in this exhibition represented by the works of Jon Derganc, Mito Gegič and Maruša Šuštar – joined by the painting of the slightly older Jure Cvitan who can also be placed within this frame. The works of Žiga Kariž, Arjan Pregl and Viktor Bernik focus on the history of art and the great painting themes. The research of the painting’s status in contemporaneity is joined by the opus of the younger generation painter Nina Slejko. The tendency to experiment and use various painting structures, layers of paint and different ways of placing the image within the painting is typical for Bojan Gorenc and Boštjan Jurečič. The research into the new possibilities for the base upon which the painting can be materialised marks the work of Gorazd Krnc (metal sheets) and Ksenija Čerče (fabrics). Some of Miha Štrukelj’s paintings are made from readymade objects - L ego bricks - which preserve the pixellated surface that has been characteristic for his painting since the late 1990s. Manja Vadla uses recycled waste to create the bases for her paintings. The wall paintings of Sašo Vrabič are images, compounded from words, on the border between poetry, comic books and paintings. The works of Polona Maher, whose work emerges from sculpting practices, Tanja Vujinović with printed computer animations and the group BridA with its art practice emerging from painting based on the visualisation of digital data all border on the research between painting and other media.


Žiga Kariž, Without title (Painter 73-2), 2009,
acrylic and photography on canvas

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of the catalogue which includes texts by Božidar Zrinski and Petja Grafenauer, in both, Slovene and English.
The curators of the exhibition are Petja Grafenauer and Božidar Zrinski.



The Image of the Book
16 July – 7 September 2010



The exhibition is one of the events celebrating Ljubljana as the 2010 World Book Capital. It presents book designs by students of the Department of Design of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana from the past fifteen years.

Prof. Radovan Jenko about the exhibition:
At the Department of Visual Communication Design we devote special attention to all aspects of book design. By introducing our students to a variety of media that call for design (illustration), we encourage them to develop genuine enthusiasm for book design. Depending on the genre, we approach book design in many different ways. In addition to our students mastering the basics (layout, typeface and materials), we seek to teach them how to make the book’s content and form coalesce into a harmonious whole.
The aim of The Image of the Book exhibition is to showcase a wide variety of approaches to book design. As a medium, the book is one of the most demanding, yet interesting challenges, while its unique rhythm and three-dimensional character require designers to rely on their extensive knowledge and experience if they are to do it justice and achieve the desired effect.

Authors: Žiga Aljaž, Miha Artnak, Ana Baraga, Eva Barborič, Anina Benulič, Suzana Bricelj, Filip Burburan, Nenad Cizelj, Laura Dowling, Andreja Džakušič, Miha Erjavec, Eva Ferk, Katja Kastelic, Rada Kikelj, Tanja Komadina, Matjaž Komel, Eva Kosel, David Krančan, Tibor Kranjc, Jaka Krevelj, Jana Pečečnik, Anže Pintar, Marko Potočnik, Sabina Rešić, Špela Rihar, Pia Rihtarič, Luka Seme, Tanja Semion, Ingbjörg Sigurðardóttir, Anja Šlibar, Nina Štajner, Nika Troha, Bára Typltová, Andreja Vekar, Aljaž Vesel, Tadeja Vidmar, Aljaž Vindiš & Mina Žabnikar

Tutors: Stane Bernik, Lucijan Bratuš, Eduard Čehovin, Radovan Jenko, Tomaž Kržišnik, Ranko Novak, Milan Pajk, Zdravko Papič, Peter Skalar, Inger Merete Skotting, Jernej Stritar, Aleksandra Vajd

Exhibition design: Jure Kožuh & Tanja Semion
Art director: prof. Radovan Jenko
Photography: Miha Benedičič
Slovenian language editing by Maja Cerar
English translation by U.T.A. prevajanje, jezikovne čarovnije d.o.o.
Printing of posters: Siar d.o.o.
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana
The project received financial support from the City of Ljubljana.
Special thanks to Hren Printing Co.
Ljubljana 2010

Author: Jure Kožuh

Reflections of Consciousness
Ivo Mršnik: Drawings and Prints
17 June -29 August 2010


Ivo Mršnik, 1000 & 1, 2005, pencil on label (photo Sašo Kovačič)

Ivo Mršnik (b. 1939) is a Slovene painter and printmaker. In 1968, he graduated from the department of painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana and that same year was hired as an art teacher at the Vič Primary School in Ljubljana. At the same time he pursued his specialist degrees, studying painting with Prof. Maksim Sedej and printmaking with Profs. Riko Debenjak and Marjan Pogačnik. He completed his specialist programme in printmaking in 1972, and his specialist programme in painting, with Prof. Gabrijel Stupica, in 1975. From 1978 to 2005 (when he retired), he worked as a professor of drawing and printmaking, along with their teaching methodology, at the Pedagogical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana. He lives and makes art in the village of Dragomer near Brezovica. He has taken part in more than a hundred solo and group exhibitions and has received several awards for his printmaking and drawing. His more notable presentations include his participation at U3 – The 2nd Triennial of Slovene Art (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, 1997) and his solo show at the Mala galerija in Ljubljana in 2004.

Ivo Mršnik, Figure I, 1970/71, color litography (photo Sašo Kovačič)

Ivo Mršnik, Head, 1986, charcoal on paper (photo Sašo Kovačič)

The present exhibition features Mršnik’s prints and drawings: from his earliest lithographs, made at the beginning of the 1970s, to his most recent prints from the series Stardust. The greater part of Mršnik’s works are related to portraiture – of himself and of strangers. As he himself explains, these portraits are a kind of signs, extremely reduced concentrates, which are records of intense inner pulsation. For his series Portraits of NNs, from the 1970s, he found his subjects in magazines and then precisely recorded their portraits on computer printout paper. In the past decade he has made series of what he calls psychograms, which, in Mršnik’s oeuvre, represent an extreme, condensed stage of the creative process; here the role of support is often assumed by other kinds of serial materials, such as stickers. Computer printout paper and stickers, which in the gallery rooms are spread out into intriguing spatial installations, are rather unconventional art choices, made from the desire to preserve a spiritual dimension in the dominion of machines and serial production. Into a time of automation, of our environment and our lives, Ivo Mršnik’s works introduce a personal expression and a personal spiritual manuscript. As Jožef Muhovič explains, “ The nature of subjectivity in art is not fundamental but rather based in the medium.”

Ivo Mršnik, Portrets of NNs, 1976, charcoal on computer printout paper (photo Sašo Kovačič)

Ivo Mršnik, 2009, pencil, frottage on computer printout paper (photo Sašo Kovačič)

The exhibition has been prepared by Breda Škrjanec, MA, museum consultant at the International Centre of Graphic Arts. It is accompanied by a bilingual, Slovene–English catalogue of the same name, which features an essay by Jožef Muhovič, “‘What Is That Little Black Thing I See There in the White?’: Brief Reflections on the Genome and Horizons of Mršnik’s Artistic Worlds”, as well as an interview with the artist by Petja Grafenauer, entitled “ Sometimes It Is Good to Stroll on the Surface So You Can See the Deepness”. The catalogue, edited by Breda Škrjanec, also includes a selection of colour reproductions and documentation of Ivo Mršnik’s art.

The exhibition is supported by Okvirji Vrhunc.

Sol LeWitt
The Book: A Machine That Makes Art
17 June -29 August 2010

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) became a star of contemporary American art with his seemingly simple geometric “structures” (a term he believed was a better description of his sculptures), drawings, and wild, ecstatically coloured wall paintings. LeWitt helped establish conceptual art and minimalism as the leading movements of the post-war era. He was a patron and friend to many artists of his day, both young and old. He reduced art to a few basic shapes (square, circle, triangle), colours (red, yellow, blue, black), and lines. Much of what he left behind has remained in the form of an idea or directive: a notion that needs to be considered, a plan for a drawing, or possible actions to be carried out.
The book occupies an important place in LeWitt’s artistic creativity. While for many people this is a less-known aspect of his work, he himself treated the book as fully equal to the other art forms in his practice. It is in his books that all his research is to be found. The development of the content in his books is handled along general themes and in accord with the development of his artistic oeuvre. For him it was important to realize a book that would be as faithful as possible to whatever goal he was trying to attain at that particular moment. The appearance, the format, the presence or absence of colour, the selection of the paper – all these things in fact depended not on the imagination but on the objective circumstances and abilities of the project’s publisher. In his books LeWitt strives to convey the great variety and diversity of his work. His books are of a medium-sized format, printed mainly in the offset method; the colours and number of pages are not precisely determined but only approximate. The binding, designs, and title reveal the content. Inside we find photographs, designs, or texts, and sometimes all three, but always perfectly balanced.

The present exhibition, which was created in collaboration with Viaindustriae, in Foligna, Italy, shows the role of the LeWitt’s books as art forms that hold a key to understanding the artist’s creative path; for this reason, the books are displayed in chronological order. The artist’s book marks the various periods of LeWitt’s artistic career, and through them he explains the methods and meanings of his art. Each of the books Sol LeWitt made is easily recognizable as being manifestly and unmistakably “his”.

Curated by Emanuele de Donno and Giorgio Maffei.

The Sol LeWitt exhibition has received support from Viaindustriae and the Italian Institute of Culture.



GESAMTKUNST LAIBACH, Fundamentals 1980–1990
15 April – 6 June 2010

Thirty years have passed since the founding of Laibach, a group whose music and performances have become part of cultural history. What many do not know, however, is that Laibach in fact began its career as a visual art group. Images that most of us know from the paintings of the Irwin group – the cross, the coffee cup, the deer, the metal worker – were originally Laibach motifs. They were part of the capital the group invested in the newly established collective Neue Slowenische Kunst in 1984. With the founding of NSK, the visual art tradition Laibach had been creating up to that time was taken over by Irwin.

Laibach Kunst, linocut, 1980

Laibach Kunst, 1980

Laibach brought an alternative post-modern form of creativity into Slovene art. The group drew connections between New Image painting, the do-it-yourself art of punk bands and the post-conceptual practices that were being promoted in the Belgrade and Zagreb art scenes. Laibach “welded together” various media – music, video, film and performance – “high” and “low” culture, pop culture, politics and art. And at the very start of the 1980s, they defined in clear terms the fundamentals of the Retro-Avant-Garde.

Exhibition

Exhibition

Laibach’s first realized exhibition (not including the one in Trbovlje in 1980, which was so controversial it was banned before it ever opened) took place in June 1981 at the Srećna galerija of the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade. Some of the group’s members had been doing their army service in Belgrade and, in their spare time, had developed contacts with the alternative and New Wave scene that met at the student centre. Titled Ausstellung Laibach Kunst, the exhibition presented some of the group’s early prints and paintings as Laibach’s music buzzed alongside them from a cassette recorder.

The artworks represented a response to the contemporary art scene outside of Yugoslavia, especially the Neue Wilde artists in West Germany, who in the late 1970s depicted such urban phenomena as the punk scene and addressed certain suppressed topics from recent German history, specifically, from the Nazi and post-war periods. Punk and the reinterrogation of Nazism and other totalitarian ideologies was also an integral part of the subculture scene in Ljubljana.

This first show in Belgrade was followed by the extraordinary ambient exhibition Plane Crash Victims, in December 1981 at the newly formed Disco FV in the Rožna Dolina Student Village in Ljubljana; Laibach then went on to have fairly regular exhibitions at Galerija ŠKUC in Ljubljana, Galerija PM in Zagreb and the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade. With the founding of NSK in 1984, Laibach redirected their energies into music, while the art tradition they had created was in large part taken over by the Irwin painters. With the disintegration of Neue Slowenische Kunst, which in the early nineties gradually reshaped itself as a utopian “state in time” (without its own territory), each of the member-groups continued to develop their own aesthetics and Laibach again started appearing from time to time in a gallery context. Thus, in 2009, at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland, Laibach had its first retrospective exhibition, which was very well received by the Polish media. Three large gallery presentations are planned for this year: in Ljubljana (at the International Centre of Graphic Arts), Trbovlje (at the Workers’ Hall) and Zagreb (at the Croatian Association of Artists).

Laibach, 1983, photo Dušan Gerlica

The interview, TV Ljubljana, 23 June 1983

The exhibition at the International Centre of Graphic Arts presents a survey of Laibach’s art in the first decade of their career, when they played a central role in the art of the 1980s subculture movement. The show presents Laibach as a multi-media group combining art, music and theoretical writings, with the transfer of theoretical thinking from Laibach to NSK shown using the example of visual culture. The exhibition is itself historic, for here paintings, prints, posters, publications, newspaper pages, invitations, record covers, photographs, concert stage sets, videos and promotional products are assembled and displayed for the first time in 30 years. Also on view will be a three new installations made especially for the International Centre of Graphic Arts exhibition.


Tomaž Hostnik (1961-1988), Laibach, 1982

The exhibited works come from the archives of Laibach, Darko Pokorn, Srečko Bajda, Barbara Borčić, Škuc Forum, Radio-Television Slovenia and the photographers Boris Cvetanović, Dragan Papić, Jane Štravs, Nikolaj Pečenko, Antonijo Živković, Siniša Lopojda and Photon Gallery, as well as from the collections of the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Neil Rector and Daniel Miller and the photography collection of the National Museum of Contemporary History.

Guided tours by Alexei Monroe, Božidar Zrinski, Barbara Borčič, Darij Zadnikar and Laibach.
Alexei Monroe is speaking:

Curator: Lilijana Stepančič
Selection of artworks: Lilijana Stepančič, Laibach
Exhibition installation: Lilijana Stepančič, Ana Kogovšek, Laibach

Media sponsors: Delo, Mladina, Radio Študent, City Magazine


ACCOMPANYING EXHIBITION:

2010 Laibach
21 April–12 May 2010, Galerija Luwigana, Ljubljana
23 April–14 May 2010, Galerija 14, Bled

Prints and posters are among the basic forms of expression for the group Laibach. Even at their earliest exhibitions, between 1980 and 1984, graphic art represented a core part of the group’s repertoire. Laibach still returns to printmaking on occasion, and now they are presenting their most recent graphic work an accompanying programme to the exhibition Gesamtkunst Laibach, Fundamentals 1980–1990. With never-ending artistic freshness, Laibach creates a path for reading images that will also appeal to the new generation born after 1980.
More information: Studio Černe

www.laibach.nsk.si




Quartet–Four Biennials Reflected in Prints
21 January - 28 March 2010

The exhibition presents print portfolios from four biennials (Hamburg 1985, Sydney 1990, Istanbul 1995, and Cetinje 2005) containing more than eighty graphic works by sixty well-known and established artists from all over the world; thus it mirrors the development of art in the past twenty years. These print portfolios represent a unique artistic and art-historical achievement, for they show the development of printmaking techniques and their involvement in the context of contemporary art. They present artists from different generations and different geographical settings; in this way they tear down borders and encourage further communication and creative possibilities – which is also what reproduced, multiplied, and distributed art generally does.
Curator of the exhibition is René Block.

Halil Altindere, Love it or Leave it, 2005, (Cetinje 2005)

Maaria Wirkkala, Unaccompanied Luggage, 1995 (Istanbul 1995)

Nam June Paik, Fluxband, 1985 (Hamburg 1985)

Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1990, (Sydney 1990)

Edition Block is founded in 1966 by René Block in Berlin. It belongs to the longest standing and most renowned publishers of multiples and graphic arts by international contemporary artists. In addition to the most significant editions by Joseph Beuys pathbreaking multiples by Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Richard Hamilton and Nam June Paik appeared at Edition Block. Publications like "Grafik des kapitalistischen Realismus" (Polke, Richter et al., 1967), "Schlitten" (1969) and "Filzanzug" (1970) by Joseph Beuys, Rebecca Horn´s "Handschuhfinger" (1973) , "The Manuscript" (1974) by Marcel Broodthaers, and Nam June Paik´s video installation "Der Denker" (1976/78) belong to the first editions of Edition Block. Meanwhile they became established in important collections. Among the current editions are multiples by Henning Christiansen, Maria Eichhorn, Ayse Erkmen, Sejla Kameric, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Olaf Metzel, Aydan Murtezaoglu, Bülent Sangar, and Carles Santos inter alia.

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Qartett in German and English, edited by René Block and Barbara Heinrich, published by Edition Block.

Guided tours by René Block, Božidar Zrinski and Breda Škrjanec.

2009 Exhibitions
A Different Štefan Galič
Table Scenes
I Was Disappointed by Lara Croft
May ’68 in Paris and the Student Movement in Ljubljana 1968–1972

A Different Štefan Galič
11 November 2009 – 10 January 2010

A Retrospective of the Work of Painter and Printmaker Štefan Galič

The retrospective A Different Štefan Galič comprises two exhibitions – the fruit of a collaboration between the International Centre of Graphic Arts and the Gallery-Museum Lendava – which together present the full artistic and human scope of the painter and printmaker Štefan Galič. The exhibition at the Gallery-Museum Lendava, the result of making a full record of Galič’s painting oeuvre, fills a gap in the scholarly treatment and interpretation of the artist. The exhibition at the International Centre of Graphic Arts, on the other hand, focuses on Galič’s graphic production, although it presents it in a new way. On view are prints, paintings, personal objects and catalogues, a part of the artist’s butterfly collection and photographs, as well as publications he designed.

Štefan Galič (1944–1997), known in the broader Slovene cultural realm primarily as a printmaker, is the finest Slovene woodcut artist of the final third of the twentieth century. His unique woodcuts, and in particular the series Records (Zapisi) and Fossils (Fosili), won him general recognition and a number of awards. Galič’s printmaking work is, from a technical point of view, extraordinarily accomplished and inventive:
for him the woodcut becomes an original medium through his use of unusually rich colours and toleration of mistakes on the matrix;
nature itself is his greatest inspiration.

The woodcut appeared with greater frequency in his work after 1975 and became his exclusive technique of expression with the series Violins (Violine) – the violin was also Galič’s favourite instrument. From this point on, he investigated thoroughly the properties of the wooden matrix, its surface structure, colour, the flow of the grain, the thickness and patterns of the tree rings. The series Butterflies (Metulji) was undoubtedly inspired by the artist’s large collection of butterflies in all their wonderful shapes and colours. The butterfly motif is ontological for Galič, pointing to his specific view of nature and its metamorphoses. In the Records series, the artist’s intervention in the matrix is minimized, with letters and numbers being increasingly replaced by the natural properties of the wood. Here nature and natural history begin to speak. In the late 1980s, the series Fossils appears in Galič’s oeuvre. These prints address the viewer with a certain primal, noble archaism, bestowing the artist’s work (now in the last decade of his life) with an imprint of monumentality and timelessness.

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Drugačni Štefan Galič / Štefan Galič másként, in Slovene and Hungarian, produced in collaboration with the Gallery-Museum Lendava. It was edited by Breda Škrjanec, who is also the author of the exhibition at the International Centre of Graphic Arts.

Events: guided tours by Breda Škrjanec, Janez Balažic and Aleksander Bassin; workshop for families, led by Brane Širca; professional excursion to Lendava, and woodcutting course.



Table Scenes
A Three-Dimensional Installation by Silvan Omerzu
16 June – 16 August 2009

photo Martin de Fernández de Córdova


Silvan Omerzu is known in the world of Slovene culture for his puppet creations and ambient art exhibitions. The exhibition at the International Center of Graphic Arts, entitled Table Scenes, is a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total artwork,” and a kind of site-specific installation. The exhibition rooms, with their doorways, their windows on one side, and white walls on the other, provide the backdrop for a long flat surface on which a series of miniature table scenes are arranged with puppets in various poses. Sivan Omerzu’s combination of light and objects creates a unique sense of space in the exhibition gallery and draws the viewer into imaginary worlds, far from the fast pace and commotion of everyday life.

Silvan Omerzu is an artist with his own artistic dramaturgy, one that is not lacking in humor. His puppets, at first glance minimalistic, are unique creatures, though obedient down to their last ball bearing. Similar gestures, poses, and movements shape the silent average majority, in which it is almost impossible to detect any individual yearning. These puppet table scenes are microcosms of a sort – installations that tell stories about life and death. In his combination of materials and technology, Omerzu creates an impressive work of design and sculpture, which contains an elemental energy he then sets in motion. There is no free will in this motion; instead, we see a kind of primordial order, in which man is not the measure of all things, a world that is governed by laws based on a different origin of nature and life.

Silvan Omerzu (b. 1955), after graduating from the Pedagogical Academy in Ljubljana, continued his studies in Prague, where he completed a specialist degree in puppet scenography and puppet design. After his return to Ljubljana, it was at the Konj Puppet Theater that he realized most fully his unique poetics aimed at adults. His productions were marked by Dionysian debauchery and filled with black, lewd gallows humor; in notoriously shameless characters such as Don Juan, King Ubu, and Don Cristobal, baseness was combined with nobility, cheapness with beauty, tradition with modernity. After 2000, in the three plays Farewell, Prince, based on motifs from the Flemish playwright and mystic Michel de Ghelderode, and The Sandman and Councilor Krespel, based on motifs from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s eerie tales, his grotesque puppets evolved into refined ascetic figures, who no longer mocked the world and themselves but now, woven into the net of fate, contemplated the meaning of life and the magic of death, pure art and divine perfection, and the mystery of creation. In 2006, Omerzu mounted the installation Tears in a Kostanjevica church; in 2008, he directed Ivan Cankar’s play The House of Our Lady, Help of Christians for the Slovene Mladinsko Theater; and in May 2009, for the Puppet Theater of Ljubljana, he directed the production Forbidden Loves, based on motifs from classical mythology.

Exhibition installation: Silvan Omerzu.
Puppets and props made by: Silvan Omerzu, Žiga Lebar and Peter Lebar.

Sponsor: Tiskarna Pleško, d.o.o.

I Was Disappointed by Lara Croft
Screenshots
7 April – 7 June 2009

The notion of the screenshot – a static image isolated from other multimedia elements, such as sound, music, rendered film sequences, and computer animation – takes us into the world of computer games and the artistic issues connected with them. While the visual-art aspect of computer games contributes significantly to their playability, it is also interesting from an art-historical perspective, for the roots of these images stretch far back into the history of European and other visual arts.

The exhibition presents a selection of images from various kinds of computer games; there have not been many art shows of this sort, and this will be the first to be mounted in Slovenia. Curated by: writer Milan Kleč, historian of art Lev Menaše, Barbara Novakovič and Helena Pivec from theatre, and Boštjan Borič from Faculty of computer and information science in Ljubljana.

Events: guided tour by Iva Jevtić and Barbara Novakovič, lecture The Architecture of Virtual Space by Or Ettlinger and workshop for children, led by Mojca Leben.

Sponsor: Čukgraf, d.o.o.

May ’68 in Paris and the Student Movement in Ljubljana 1968–1972 Posters, Film and Photographs
29 January – 22 March 2009

The protests and strikes by students and workers in Paris and other French cities in May and June of 1968, which challenged the traditional values of society and destabilized the regime of Charles de Gaulle, left an indelible mark on the history of the second half of the twentieth century. The protests, which soon spread across the world, encompassed Yugoslavia as well, including Ljubljana. French artists, some inspired by Guy Debord, acted as a kind of propaganda machine for the uprising. They occupied universities, established people’s studios, became agitators and activists, and exhibited their work on the streets and in factories.

Courtesy Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image imprimée, La Louviere, Belgija.

The exhibition will present around eighty posters, loaned by the Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée in La Louvière, Belgium. They were created for the events in Paris, and their image has become synonymous with the urban struggle. The student movement in Ljubljana, from 1968 to 1972, will be documented by a film by Majda Širca, as well as the student newspapers Tribuna and SP (standing for slovensko podzemlje – “the Slovene underground”), leaflets and announcements, and photographs by Tone Stojko, Edi Šelhaus, and Žare Veselič, from the Museum and Galleries of the City of Ljubljana and Slovenia’s National Museum of Contemporary History.


Demonstrations in front of Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, 14 April 1971.
Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljane Archives. Photo Žare Veselič.

Curator: Catherine de Braekeleer from the Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image imprimée. Co-ordinators: Marie Van Bosterhaut and Mirjam Behek (International Centre of Graphic Arts). Co-organiser of the exhibition Student Movement in Ljubljana, 1968–1972: Dunja Kalčič from The National and University Library, Ljubljana.
Co-organizers: Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image imprimée, The National and University Library
Supported by: The French Community of Wallonia-Brussels
This exhibition has been supported by the French Community of Wallonia-Brussels (Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles). We have prepared it as part of the accord between the French Community of Wallonia-Brussels and the Republic of Slovenia.

Guided public tours conducted by Darko Štrajn, Pavel Zgaga and Lenart Šetinc.
A round table discussion about the student movement in Ljubljana in 1968–1972 led by Darko Štrajn and by the participants Frane Adam, Pavle Čelik, Mladen Dolar, Goranka Kreačič, Bogomir Mihevc, Franci Pivec, Branka Predan, Marjan Pugartnik and Pavel Zgaga forms part of the exhibition.

2008 Exhibitions
FV
A Third Look
Gabrijel Stupica
Zora Stančič & Petra Varl
Contemporary Slovene Architecture
The Rational Eye
Why, Miss, You're as Pretty as a Poster!
Herman Gvardjančič

FV
Alternative scene of the Eighties
27 November 2008 - 18 January 2009

The exhibition conveys the tumultuous times of the 1980s in Slovenia, shedding light on the important social and artistic events of a period in which significant shifts were happening on the margins of the socialist society, making possible the appearance of the first gay and lesbian clubs, independent publishing houses, multimedia groups, and other forms of countercultural creativity.

Opening of the K4 club, 1984, photograph	Security ribbon at Disco FV, handmade, property of Dario Seraval

The group FV 112/15 was a central part of Ljubljana’s counterculture and the heart of the alternative youth movement in the 1980s. The group displays all the signs of an artistic project, one that developed from an amateur theater group and, in the activities of an alternative club, provided a space for the expression of sexual, social, cultural, and artistic difference. The FV group was closely involved with the development of Slovene video art and the emergence of progressive trends in music, as expressed by such legendary groups as Borghesia, Videosex, and Laibach, among others.

Borghesia Concert in Rotterdam, 1988, poster	UBR, We’re Here, We’re Not Yours, 1985, draft for a record jacket

The exhibition features invitations, posters, flyers and other publications, as well as photographs, videos, and music, all originating from the work of the FV group. The materials were donated to us by one of the FV members, Neven Korda, and are therefore a part of the permanent collection of the International Centre of Graphic Arts.

Curated by Breda Škrjanec.
Guided public tours conducted by Neven Korda, Nicolai Jeffs and Aldo Ivančić.
We are also preparing a catalogue comprising visual materials as well as catalogue essays in Slovene and English language.

Regina Pessoa
Tragic Story with Happy Ending
9 December 2008 - 4 January 2009

Exhibition of engravings from the animated film

Regina Pessoa, Tragic Story with Happy Ending, 2005, engraving	Regina Pessoa

“The stories I like to tell are always simple ones, about people I’ve known. Some are still alive, others dead. They have had anonymous lives which have been somewhat ignored. They have gone unnoticed by the world and have been rapidly forgotten. I am interested in the mysteries, the little dramas and the poetry hidden in their apparently banal lives. They are my heroes and role models. The ideas for this film came from an engraving and silk screen print I was working on when I was studying at the Fine Arts School. Each phrase inspired an engraving and each image suggested a new phrase and thus new technical and aesthetic challenges emerged. A long production process followed...

We are following a girl and we discover that she is not the same as other people. She is “different”. The cause of her difference does not bother the community in which she lives as her suffering is of a very individual nature. The community and the girl react to the difference, the former by showing their intolerance, the latter by isolating herself. With time the community finally and rather coldly gets used to the presence of the difference, keeping it at a distance, but at the same time allowing it to become part of the daily bustle of their lives. Differences exist, persist and are ever present. Some times there is a reason for their existence and they correspond to temporary states of transit to other states of existence, other times they are fatal ... Nevertheless, those who live them must accept them in order to achieve a deeper knowledge of themselves and a better awareness of the world. One day she will go away and leave the community which will understand, albeit too late, that that strange character they had always kept at a distance had ended up mysteriously becoming part of their lives...

In my previous film The Night (A Noite) I used engraving over plaster plates, animated directly under a camera. This work produced very interesting graphic results, but was very morose, solitary and laborious. In Tragic Story with Happy Ending (História trágica com final feliz), I wanted to continue to use engraving, because it is a technique with a very attractive graphic potential, particularly in terms of the play of light and shade that it allows. I have found from my previous experience that the work of animation and completion needs to be made lighter and less tedious. As a result, I divided the work with two other animators and three illustrators, finishing the drawings using a small team of six people who utilized a special engraving technique that I had developed to obtain the results I wanted: the animation drawings were photocopied onto a special paper, intended for posters, which were then coated in a black china paint and scraped, which gave them a very similar appearance to a scraper board.

Towards the end, we also made use of the potential that the computer offers us, particularly in combining the different levels of animation with the scenery and making one or another movement of the camera.”

Regina Pessoa

The exhibition is part of the Festival Animateka.

A Third Look
The Multiplicity of of Graphic Arts Today
11 September - 9 November 2008

Nearly 100 works of 25 artists show the diversity of contemporary Slovene graphic art, its role in the context of contemporary art, and its connections with other reproducible media.

Tomaž Tomažin, Child and Rabbit, 2007, lightbox, 130.7 x 26.7 x 8.5 cm

These artists do not confine their art only to the print; they also work with viedo, photography, computer projects, and artist's books. They understand graphic art as an independent form of artistic expression with its own formal characteristics and rich expressive possibilities. They associate the medium with reproducibility, by means of which they create new wholes in both subject matter and concept. In their works thew underscore an awareness of the printed and multiplied surface as having the potential to create a unique communicative platform that is able to reach a mass audience with a large edition or that can be an intimate but no less powerful story with only a few copies.

	Vesna Drnovšek, Walk (the Dog), 2008, color aquatint, relief print, 53 x 12,5 cm
		Berko, You're never far from Berko's Star, 2005-2008 (series), computer graphic, 21 x 29,5 cm
Beli sladoled, Short Striptease and Antijokes (A Collection of Jokes and Short Comics), self-published, Ljubljana 2005–2006 – Postojna 2007, 123 pp., edition of 100, photocopy publication, hardbound, color/hand-sprayed cover

he artists presented in the exhibition are:
Beli sladoled [Miha Perme in Leon Zoudar], Martina Bohar, Berko, BridA [Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango in Jurij Pavlica], Peter Ciuha, Vesna Drnovšek, Irma Gnezda, Dejan Habicht, Ištvan Išt Huzjan, Matej Košir, Dominik Križan, Tanja Lažetić, Tomaž Lunder & Huiqin Wang, Sonja Makuc, Nataša Mirtič, Jasmina Nedanovski, Arjan Pregl, Maja Strmecki, Gorazd Šimenko, Tomaž Tomažin, Manja Vadla, Barbara Eva Zavodnik, umetniški projekt Reartikulacija in projekt Stripble.

Curated by Breda Škrjanec and Božidar Zrinski.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue A Third Look, The Multiplicity of Graphic Art Today in Slovene and English.

Sponsored by ČukGraf d.o.o.

Gabrijel Stupica, Resistance
Srebrenica Cultural Centre, Bosnia and Hercegovina
4 July - 11 July 2009

The exhibition is organised by the International Centre of Graphic Arts, the Organising Committee for Commemorating 11 July 1995 on the 14th Anniversary of the Genocide against Bosniacs in the “UN Safe Area” of Srebrenica and the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
The exhibition is part of the programme that commemorates 11 July 1995, on the 14th anniversary of the genocide against Bosniacs in the “UN safe area” of Srebrenica, and the burial of the identified victims.


The opening of the exhibition at Srebrenica Cultural Centre


Gabrijel Stupica, Resistance
International Centre of Graphic Arts
11 September - 9 November 2008

Gabrijel Stupica (1913 – 1990) was one of the giants of twentieth-century Slovene art. He helped to shape the country’s artistic identity both as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he taught several generations of artists, and through his artwork, which in the 1950s and 1960s displayed the Western-oriented style of figural existential intimism.

Gabrijel Stupica, Mourners, from the series Resistance, 1962, gouche	Gabrijel Stupica, The Truck, from the series Resistance, 1962, gouche

The exhibition focuses on a series of twelve previously unknown small-format gouaches made sometime around 1958; these works have never been on public view. They were created as part of a proposal for decorating the halls of the People’s Assembly of the People’s Republic of Slovenia (today’s Parliament). In 1957, Gabrijel Stupica was one of a group of Slovenia’s finest artists who were asked to adorn the interior of the new building. He proposed a monumental triptych on the subject of resistance and oppression, illustrated by a central image of protesters that would be flanked by two pictures of market women. The committee rejected the proposal on the grounds that it did not show the reality of the age, that it was too modern, and that its subject was unacceptable, and instead they awarded the commission to Slavko Pengov.

Curated by Jure Mikuž. Coordinated by Mirjam Behek.
The exhibition is accopmanied by a catalogue Gabrijel Stupica, The Resistance in Slovene and English.

Sponsored by ACH d.d. and Mercator d.d.

Zora Stančič in Petra Varl
The Past Twenty Years
2 July – 31 August 2008

Zora Stančič (b. Štrbe, Bosnia–Herzegovina, 1956) graduated in 1984 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo and in 1990 completed the postgraduate printmaking course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. She works as an independent artist.	Petra Varl (b. Ljubljana, 1965) graduated in 1989 from the Ljubljana academy, where she also earned her master’s degree in 1997. Since 2000, she has been teaching drawing and printmaking in the art department of the Pedagogical Faculty at the University of Maribor.
Zora Stančič, Long play, computer print on plexiglass, 2006	Petra Varl, Petra on the Internet, internet portfolio, SCCA, Ljubljana, 1997

They have been making their mark on the art scene in Slovenia every since the joint show Lithographs at the Bežigrad Gallery in 1988, where they brought fresh creative energy to the print through images based on pop art, a style that has never fully flourished in Slovenia.
Their initial art projects were somewhat alike and their authorship many times confused, but they both have managed to maintain their own visual expression. Today, Petra Varl is mostly devoted to exploring drawings and its minimalist, condensed expression, while Zora Stančič uses forever new ways of creative expression, fusing the traditional with the contemporary. They both owe a lot to graphic art and they have both been looking for new creative spaces, from galleries to artist’s books and urban environment.
Their prints, as well as their other works, present witty insights into what seem to be self-evident phenomena of contemporary life and offer subtle commentary on the empty values of our age. The exhibition joins in a unified message the two artists’ most representative individual works, from various periods, and new works that have emerged as a result of their dialogue with each other. The gallery installation recreatews the atmosphere of a home, since the artists’ homes often do double duty as a studio, with many of their works being made right in the living room or kitchen.
Some of the exhibited works are on view for the time.
The exhibition is accompanied by book in Slovenian and English is published along with the exhibition, titled Zora Stančič & Petra Varl The Past Twenty Years.

Curated by Božidar Zrinski.
The exhibition is sponsored by

Contemporary Slovene Architecture
3 June - 22 June 2008

The exhibition Contemporary Slovene Architecture is part of “Architecture Week,” which will take place in Ljubljana 15–22 June 2008 in conjunction with the international conference of the European Forum for Architectural Policies.
The exhibition is the latest in a series of presentations of the most innovative achievements of Slovene architecture, which the DESSA Gallery has been organizing since 1991. The present selection of twenty-four works from the past eight years originated as a presentation at the 1st Lisbon Architecture Triennial in 2007.
For the exhibition at the International Centre of Graphic Arts the DESSA Gallery has selected six newest achievements of our architecture. Among them is the Congress Centre Brdo pri Kranju, made especially for the Presidency of EU 2008. Slovene architecture, especially in recent years, has been gaining recognition abroad, culminating last year in the European Union awarding its Mies van der Rohe Emerging Architect Special Mention prize to the building of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in Ljubljana, which was designed by architects Matija Bevk and Vasa J. Perović. Their work was recognized as the best European building created by young architects over the past two years.

Matija Bevk, Vasa J. Perović, Andrej Ukmar: Congress Centre Brdo, Brdo pri Kranju, 2007, picture Miran Kambič Congress Centre Brdo, built on the occasion of Slovenian Presidency of the European Union, is located in the Brdo compound, a medieval castle complex formerly belonging to Yugoslav royal family, 20 kilometers from Ljubljana. The new building is set in the beautiful greenery, part of the protected natural forest. Building is conceived as a low glass pavilion which by no means reveals its representative purpose and leaves the primary role to nature. The volume of Congress Centre Brdo follows the outlines of existing old service building of the castle from which the congress centre is distanced by a stone platform. The entrance into the glass pavilion is discreetly marked by the cut out volume on the eastern side of the building. The interior is organized as space for open communication – the ground floor functions as reception area that can stage different events, press conferences, receptions, meetings and exhibition. The large double-height congress hall, the heart of the pavilion, is inserted in the centre of the building. It is entirely clad in perforated oak panels that create warm atmosphere of the entire complex. The first floor houses open and flexible office spaces which are enclosed by transparent glass panels, some of them face the cut-out patio space in the middle of the building. Transparency is the main feature of the whole building, facade made of two layers of glass has minimum reflection and therefore optimal visual connection with nature. Park with its greenery thus becomes part of the interior and a scenography for all the events taking place in the building.

The DESSA Gallery published the catalouge Contemporary Architecture in Slovenia in 2007 for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2007, containing the original 24 projects on view at the International Centre of Graphic Arts as welll. But for this exhibition a new version, completed with the 6 new projects is issued and copublished by the International Centre of Graphic Arts.

Curated by Andrey Hrasuky from The DESSA Gallery. Coordinated by Mirjam Behek.

The exhibition is kindly supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning of Republic of Slovenia.

The Rational Eye
Geometric, Optical, Kinetic and Programmed Art
22 April - 25 May 2008

In the first decades of the latter half of the twentieth century, geometric art was reborn. After the bloodshed of World War II, it personified reason and a rational approach to life, appearing sporadically and independently in countries around the world that lived under differing political and economic conditions. The exhibition presents fifteen artists MGLC has already brought together once in the print portfolio Absolutely Black and White, published in 2005. On display are serigraphies, paintings and wall objects made by Getulio Alviani, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Andreas Christen, Anthony Hill, Janusz Kapusta, Julije Knifer, Edoardo Landi, Peter Lowe, Manfredo Massironi, Almir Mavignier, François Morellet, Ivan Picelj, Jeffrey Steele, Joël Stein, and Ryszard Winiarski. The exhibition also shows a documentary filmed in 1965 at the opening of The Responsive Eye in New York’s MOMA made by today worldwide renown film director Brian de Palma.

Peter Lowe, Ten radiating triangler a, b, 1996, acryl on canvas, two pieces, 110 x 110 cm	Diora Fraglica and Mirijam Behek at the opening of the exhibition, 22 April 2008

The catalogue of the exhibition, Razumsko oko, is available in Slovenian.
Curated by Mirjam Behek.

Why, Miss, You’re as Pretty as a Poster!
The Ljubljana Poster Between the Wars
4 March – 13 April 2008

One result of rise of printing in Europe in the fifteenth century was the emergence of the poster, a generally useful medium for advertising, persuading, notifying, and informing that has, for centuries, accompanied events all over the world. By the same token, the posters that appeared in public locations throughout Ljubljana in the period between World War I and World War II informed people about current political happenings, called on them to vote, announced the sinking of the railroad, warned them of the evils of drink, invited them to the circus, the theater, and the cinema, advertised such brands as Zlatorog, Ilirija, and Peko and such products as cigarettes, bicycles, motorcycles, and even cars.
Their pictures and messages show the power of visual culture at a time when the poster did not yet compete with television, billboards, or the Internet. Most of the more than 150 exhibited posters, which have been carefully preserved by the City Museum of Ljubljana, the National Museum of Slovenia, the National and University Library, the National Gallery, and the History Archives of Ljubljana, as well as in private collections, will be on public view for the first time since their original display. They include some of the oldest posters printed in our region. The exhibition also shows pictures and a film from that time that gives us a glimpse of the life in Ljubljana and how the posters decorated Ljubljana's streets.

Domicijan Serajnik, Delniška tiskarna d.d. v Ljubljani,
1929, preserved by National and Universitiy Library

The exhibition is curated by Meta Kordiš and Božidar Zrinski.

Herman Gvardjančič
Sketches
24 January – 24 February 2008

Herman Gvardjančič (b. 1943, Gorenja vas pri Škofji Loki) is an established late modern and postmodern Slovene artist and a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. For this extensive solo exhibition, he presents for the first time hundreds of sketches from different periods in his artistic career. These are supplemented by a selection of paintings that in the 1980s brought the new and innovative look of postmodernism to Slovene painting; these paintings have not been exhibited for more than two decades. The selected works, from rough sketch to finished painting, exemplify the creative process through which the initial artistic jotting, often made inadvertently and spontaneously on whatever piece of paper is handy, evolves into a coherent picture that conveys the artist’s message. The chosen paintings speak about the importance of the home in a person’s life, its role as a shelter that is not necessarily safe and secure.

The exhibition is part of a trilogy, with the other two shows being presented at the City Art Museum in Ljubljana and the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Celje.

Curated by Mirjam Behek.

RAM L5, 1969, lithograph, 48 x 48 cm	glAmor, 2003, experimental music and animation, 6'20", detail

Infromatrix – A Book of Visual Dialogs was published in 1979, but Zajec has been developing his research through various projects and his latest version of the programme Informatrix 3, will be presented to users for the first time at the exhibition.
Edvard Zajec belongs to the pioneers of computer art, Frank Popper lists him as one of 27 pioneers in electronic art in his 1993 book Art of the Electronic Age, and has since 1968 taken part in most international events connected with computer and media art. His works have been exhibited, among others, by Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, several times at WRO Media Art Biennial, Locarno Video Art Festival, Computerkunst, Ars Electronica, ISEA, SIGGRAPH as well as other international conferences. Internationally renowned writers have written about him, such as Umbro Apollonio, Herbert W. Franke, Giulio Montenero, Frank Popper, Alan Sutcliffe, etc.

Exhibition is curated by: Breda Škrjanec

 

The Unbound Eyes of Anxiousnes / 27th Biennial of Graphic Arts
6. September – 28. October 2007

Exhibition spaces and participating artists:
Ljubljana municipal bus service, Park Tivoli, Porodnišnica, Ribji trg: Anamarija Šmajdek
Billboards, Ljubljana (Bežigrad, Center): Zora Stančič
The catalogue of the 27 th Biennial of Graphic Arts: Metka Krašovec, Dan Perjovschi, Dušan Pirih Hup, Boštjan Pucelj, Andrej Štular
International Centre of Graphic Arts : Paweł Althamer & Artur Żmijewski, Christiane Baumgartner, Goran Bertok, Günter Brus, Peter Fuss, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Peter Halley, Jeon Joonho, William Kentridge, Mikael Kihlman, Vladimir Makuc, Ivan Picelj, son:DA, Nancy Spero
Modna hiša, Ljubljana,  Mercator Center Maribor, Mercator Center Celje: Marija Mojca Pungerčar
Maximarket, Ljubljana: Beli sladoled
Poster sites, Ljubljana (Železniška postaja – Trg OF, Borštnikov trg – Ferant): Arjan Pregl
Website www.indija.si: Društvo za domače raziskave
Website www.jaka.org/2007/razorganizator: Jaka Železnikar
Private apartments, Ljubljana: Danilo Jejčič, Kim Seung Yeong, Živko I. Marušič, Anamarija Šmajdek, Ben, Sašo Vrabič


Jeon Joonho, The White House, 2005−2006, computer animation, 32' 16"
Grand Prix of the 27 th Biennial of Graphic Arts

Nancy Spero, Israeli Women Soldiers, 1993, handprinting on paper

son:DA, wall Nr_027.psd, 2007, wall-paper

This exhibition presents artists from various generations and stylistic orientations who have, in the past years and decades, marked art and society in Slovenia as well as internationally. The title of the exhibition speaks of the key moment in artistic creation - when a given idea gains a visual form: the creative anxiousness present in the mind of artist thus becomes unbound, freed of »chaos«, and is transformed in to a visible work of art. This is why the exhibition stresses the creative process of art and the figure of the artist as an intellectual. The Gallery of the International Centre of Graphic Artspresents artists of different generations and who uses various creative approaches in their artistic work. Their works speak of personal, social and political themes as well as research in to the language of visual creation itself. In both cases, these works are nonetheless part of a social reality that they also form and comment upon. That part of the main exhibition that takes up public non-gallery and media spaceis part of a complex public discourse and exists as a message in the media world of communication. Here the participating artists research the economic, political and social structures surrounding them and materialize their findings through the language of art. On the other hand, it is up to the multitude of potential viewers of the thus conceived and displayed works to notice them among all the other available information, and to recognize these works as containing relevant artistic messages. For more than one hundred years the book has been a potential space for visual creativity and representation. Five contributions to The Unbound Eyes of Anxiousness gain exhibition space in the Catalogue of the 27th Biennial of Graphic Arts (it was the 25th Biennial that first saw the catalogue deployed as an exhibition space!). Therefore, the reader/viewer can traverse from the documentary to the creative in just one publication.
As they form one of the „last stops“ of art, private apartmentshave also been included as actual exhibition spaces of the Biennial. Works of art displayed in these apartments speak not only of collecting and ownership, but also of the personal and intimate relationships individuals have to the works of art that they posses. These works of art take on a life that is different from the life they have when exhibited in public spaces or as part of a predictable museum presentation. Six private apartments in the centre of Ljubljana will present the works of artists from the permanent collection of the International Centre of Graphic Arts.

The exhibition is curated by Lilijana Stepančič, Breda Škrjanec and Božidar Zrinski.

Opening the Statelet Archives 1992 - 2007
3 July – 12 August 2007  

Milena Kosec (1948, Ljubljana) founded the phantom Scarecrow Statelet on 14 th May, 1992. Up until its dissolution in 2000, the Scarecrow Statelet was an artistic parallel to the Slovene state. The Statelet is a witty, ironic, and self-ironical personification of the characteristics of art in Slovenia in the 1990s. The exhibition presents »leftovers« and »documents« regarding the workings of the Scarecrow Statelet as well as the Statelet’s collection of artworks by contemporary Slovene artists. The collection is made up of “acquisitions” from various exhibitions, works that the artists themselves gave to their visitors.

During the years of its existence, the Scarecrow Statelet became one of the most important representatives of the art of the 1990s. Various acts, actions, writings, correspondences, and public communications (especially well received were the actions Black cube, Street Sale in front of the Gallery of Modern Art, Woman’s room and Man’s room at Metelkova, the Blue tower at Vila Katarina, Marička B. Pomagaj, Heart beat, Personal talks, etc.), the Statelet established a relationship to current socio-political conditions; through its artistic inventiveness the Statelet also acutely commented upon our institutionalized everyday life, a life it had actually also become a part of.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue The Scarecrow Statelet of Milena Kosec 1992 – 2007. This brings together extensive illustrations and important theoretical texts in both Slovene and English by Lilijana Stepančič, "The Personal in the Impersonal", Božidar Zrinski, "The Scarecrow Statelet as an Exhibited State"; Laura Safred, "The Displacement of Artworks in the Ninetines"; Nikolai Jeffs, "Milena Kosec’s Scarecrow Statelet and Varieties of Anarchism (Manifest, Latent, Inverse)". These texts are rounded up by an interview with Milena Kosec conducted by Breda Škrjanec, the editor of the book, and the curator of the exhibition. The book was designed by Maja Licul and accompanied with video documentary by Maja Malus.
Guided public tour conducted by Lela B. Njatin.


The Painter's Eye and the Camera
Spacal's Photographic Conquest of Reality
28 June – 12 August 2007

Although photography was the first visual medium Lojze Spacal adopted, and kept resorting to throughout his career, his photographic works were until recently virtually unknown. Once Spacal started painting, he only took photographs when prompted by his artistic aspirations.

Lojze Spacal, Covered Terrace in Istria, 1950, gelatin-silver print

Lojze Spacal, Covered Terrace in Istria, 1950, woodcut

Spacal took photographs spontaneously, while walking on the shore or visiting harbors, saltpans, shipyards in Istria and the Karst, always guided by his artistic imagination. He was particularly fascinated by features that were typical of the Littoral and the Karst, the ones that preoccupied him as a painter and that we are familiar with from his prints and drawings.
There are ninety-nine photographs on view, quite a lot of them contact prints, and eighteen other works – drawings, graphic prints, paintings and a sketch for the set design of the opera Nozze Istriane (Istrian Wedding). These works are on loan from the International Center of Graphic Arts, the Lojze Spacal Gallery in Štanjel, the Association of Slovene Cultural Societies in Trieste, one graphic print is from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, and some of the works are the property of the artist’s family.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue in Slovene and English, one of six publications dedicated to the 100 th anniversary of Lojze Spacal’s birth. Lara Štrumej’s text accompanies a wealth of pictorial material.
In co-operation with Moderna galerija. Exhibition curator is Lara Štrumej.



Matjaž Vipotnik
Designs for the SMG 1980–1994
10 May – 17 June 2007

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Mladinsko Theater

Matjaž Vipotnik was creatively connected with the lively experimental period of the 1970s and 1980s that brought new energy to the theater of Ljubljana and Slovenia. He was constantly striving to attract critical and inquisitive viewers to the theater, which for him was a metaphor of the entire world. He realized his ideas most fully in his consummately designed posters, especially those made for the Mladinsko Theater, with which he collaborated from 1980 to 1994.


Poster for the play The Raven

A bilingual, Slovene/English catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition; it includes an essay by Dr. Stane Bernik entitled, “The Vipotnik Poster and the Graphic Identity of the Mladinsko Theater at the Center of Slovene Visual Design.”
Alongside the exhibition, Saturday workshops are being organized for children at which players from the Mladinsko company will reveal the secrets of the actor’s craft. Guided public tours conducted by Tomaž Toporišič, the Mladinsko’s dramaturge, and Ivo Svetina, director of the Slovene Theater Museum, are also scheduled.
Events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Mladinsko Theater are supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana, Zavarovalnica Triglav, d.d., and Mobitel, d.d.



Christoph Feichtinger
Ferrograms: Printmaking in the Street
15 March – 29 April 2007

Autodidact, painter and printmaker Christoph Feichtinger (b. 1947, Saalfelden), from Austrian Styria, presents a series of ferrograms, the unusual and unique prints he has been making in situ since 1994 in cities around the world – including, in 2006, in Ljubljana. Where does he find his creative challenge? In the overlooked decorative features of urban street fixtures, as he uses iron manhole covers for his printing matrices. From these objects he takes abstract ornaments, lettering, and patterns, which, when printed on paper, speak to how a utilitarian object can become an aesthetic one and so establish a dialogue between two very different worlds.

Ferrogram (Strasbourg, France)

Ferrogram (Vienna, Austria)

Ferrogram (Davos, Switzerland)

Ferrogram (Isfahan, Iran)

Ferrogram (Beijing, China)

Ferogram (Aguascalientes, Mexico)

Artcoustics
The Stories Told by Record Covers
21 December 2006 - 25 February 2007

Record covers made a definitive mark on the visual image
of twentieth-century urban culture. The exhibition has been conceived as a multilayered and multimedia cultural and educational experience. Records and their covers – those fascinating, seductive objects that could once be found in nearly every home – are presented here as a phenomenon that reveals the commercial, class, sexual and ideological parameters of the twentieth-century world. The first section of the exhibition presents the development of audio media from shellacs, singles, LPs, and cassettes to compact discs, as well as various forms of record packaging and the different ways records have been used. The second section presents the colorful world of the record sleeve, as it was designed in the twentieth century by such visual artists as Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dubuffet, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys, Raymond Pettibon, Jože Slak-Đoka, Bogdan Borćić, Matjaž Vipotnik, Bronislav Fajon, Laibach, Kostja Gatnik, Slavko Furlan, Tadej Pogačar, Ediscroato, Marko Ilič, Jugoslav Vlahović, and many others. The third section analyzes record covers with regard to their design and their social and political implications. It presents the stereotypical designs that emerged for jazz, rock, punk, classical music, popular folk music, etc., and examines the content of record covers that attempted to broach various social and political issues. It also looks at records that were the product of different music subcultures and their distribution networks both in Slovenia and abroad. Finally, the exhibition speaks to the fact the many private and public record collections can be said to represent the most prevalent and most widely dispersed form of collecting twentieth-century art and visual culture.


The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with Radio Slovenia and Radio Študent. The curators of the exhibition are Nikolai Jeffs, Guy Schraenen, and Božidar Zrinski; serving as consultants are Ičo Vidmar, Polona Poberžnik, Jure Matičič, and Branko Kostelnik.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in Slovene and English, with texts by Nikolai Jeffs, Branko Kostelnik, Polona Poberžnik, Jure Matičič, Rajko Muršič, and Ičo Vidmar. Also included are interviews with Zoran Pistotnik, Varja Velikonja and Bronislav Fajon. A separate section, with essays by Guy Schraenen and Bojana Piškur, is devoted to the links between sound and art. The catalogue has been edited by Božidar Zrinski.

Sunday guide visits: Božidar Zrinski, Matjaž Ambrožič, Ičo Vidmar, Jure Longyka, Nikolai Jeffs, Miha Zadnikar, Simona Moličnik, Rajko Muršič and Polona Poberžnik.

The Gorenje Company is the sponsor of exhibition; the IPF Institute is the exhibition donor.

The Allure of the Matrix
The Woodcut in Slovenia in the 20th Century
5 October – 3 December 2006

Exhibition continues our series devoted to Slovene grapchic art production in the 20th century. It presents an anthological overview of Slovene woodcut and linocut prints from 1911 to 2006, with the emphasis on work produced since 1950. The exhibition seeks to answer the question, why, in an age that celebrated progress and technology, did artists turn to an archaic, old-fashioned and time-consuming printing technique to express their ideas and messages. The woodcut, after all, is characterized by a high degree of craftsmanship, as well as commitment, precision, and discipline. The technique of woodblock printing allows artists to develop their own distinctive play of light and dark, expressionism and lyricism. Conceptually, the exhibition at MGLC explores the work of artists who sought or found in this relief-printing technique a form of visual expression adequate to their artistic message. Special attention is given to those who used the woodcut or linocut to create more extensive bodies of work.


Štefan Galič, Fosil XXXX b, 1989, colour woodcut, 66 x 100 cm, photo: Damjan Švarc

The exhibition artists are: Bogdan Borčić, Lucijan Bratuš, Boni Čeh, Avgust Černigoj, Riko Debenjak, Štefan Galič, Alenka Gerlovič, Vito Globočnik, Bojan Golija, Bojan Gorenec, Zdenko Huzjan, IRWIN, Božidar Jakac, Boris Jesih, Dore Klemenčič - Maj, France Kralj, Tone Kralj, Miha Maleš, Vladimir Makuc, Živko Marušič, France Mihelič, Jan Oeltjen, Nikolaj Pirnat, Marij Pregelj, Maksim Sedej, Ivan Seljak, Hinko Smrekar, Lojze Spacal, Zora Stančič, Franjo Stiplovšek, Saša Šantl, Tanja Špenko, Ive Šubic, Marijan Tršar, Klavdij Tutta, Franco Vecchiet, Drago Vidmar, Nande Vidmar, Huiqin Wang and Mojca Zlokarnik. Curated by Breda Škrjanec.

In the time of the exhibition, demonstrations and workshops of the printing technique of woodcut were held in MGLC graphic ateliers.

Sunday guide visits: Breda Škrjanec, Zora Stančič and Boris Jesih.

The exhibition is sponsored by Petrol and Marand.




Alan Hranitelj
An Exhibition of Costumes 1986–2006
1 June – 10 September 2006

Photo: Dejan Habicht

Costume designer Alan Hranitelj was born in 1968 in Zagreb, where he attended the School for the Visual Arts. As a member of the Croatian Association of Applied Arts Artists (Ulupuh) and the group Modagram, he participated in many group exhibitions and fashion shows both in Croatia and abroad. In 1985, he worked as makeup designer for the play Baptism under Triglav at Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana. He continued his professional career in Ljubljana as a theatrical makeup and costume designer. In 1991, he designed haute couture collections in Milan and realized that the fashion world was not for him. After a one-year stay in Italy, he returned to Slovenia, where costume and makeup design for the theater, opera, and film became his main activity. He also devoted himself to designing dresses for objects, clothes, and accessories such as hats and handbags. Alan Hranitelj lives and works in Ljubljana.

This exhibition represents a selection from a rich 20 years of Hranitelj’s activities. Original as well as re-done theatre, opera, film costumes designed for more than 140 different shows are on display, as are dress objects, dresses for special occasions, and fashion accessories .

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with text The Garment as a Work of Art by art historian Jure Mikuž and a complete documentation on c ostume design by Alan Hranitelj 1986–2006.

In co-operation with Slovenian theatres, galleris and museums: Gledališče Koper, Hrvatsko narodno kazalište Ivana pl. Zajca iz Reke, IMPOL d.o.o., Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana, Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Pokrajinski muzej Maribor, Slovenski etnografski muzej, SNG Opera in balet Ljubljana, SNG Maribor, Prešernovo gledališče Kranj in Špas Teater

The exhibition is sponsored by:
Lek Pharmaceuticals and Adria Mobil d.o.o., Akrapovič, AteljeGalerija, Europlakat d.o.o, Fondazione Sartirana Arte, Grand hotel Union, IEDC Poslovna šola Bled, Kogl, Medex d.d., Nova, Provincia di Pavia, Pro mak d.o.o., Restavracija Arboretum



Street Art
Stencils, Posters and Stickers / a Low-Tech Re-action!
15 March – 14 May 2006

In recent years, Street Art has been appearing intensely in all the larger urban centers of Slovenia. This internationally conceived exhibition presents stencils, posters, stickers, and other strategies for presenting such forms of visual intervention in the public space. We understand Street Art as art, play, or political action that influences our perception of our surroundings and changes our mental images of them.

Space Invader from France, Flying Fortress from Germany, M-city from Poland, and The London Police from the Netherlands are among the most admired and influential creators of this kind of work abroad; they are joined in the exhibition by the Croatian artists Filjio & Kenova and the Slovene artists Lele, Rone84, Ioke42, Sektion 1.3, Skrana, Tacek, Zek Advance, Ratt One and Zenf (Ash). Curated by Božidar Zrinski.

M-city, Poland

Zek Advance, Slovenia

A fanzine with texts in Slovene and English language by Mitja Velikonja and Mateja Fajt was made to accompany the exhibition.

Sunday guide visits: Božidar Zrinski, Ivan Stanič and Andrej Štular - Skrana.

Media support by Radio Marš.

Jože Ciuha
An Exhibition of Paintings, Prints, Watercolours and Drawings
3 December 2005 – 19 February 2006

Jože Ciuha belongs to that group of Slovene visual artists who in the period after the Second World War made their mark on Slovene art through their creative work, their social commitment and their cosmopolitan outlook. Ciuha’s art is based on the use of Byzantine isocephalism, which he continually reinterprets by introducing new accents from the changing reality. The exhibition at the International Centre of Graphic Arts presents a cross-section of Ciuha’s artistic body of work, focusing on key moments in his search for an artistic identity.
Most of the paintings, prints, watercolours and drawings on view are being presented to the Slovene public for the first time.
Curated by Božidar Zrinski.

Sunday guide visits: Jože Ciuha, Božidar Zrinski, Miklavž Komelj and Manca Košir.

Media support by Le Monde diplomatique.

e-a-t.06 (experiment and typography)
Selection of contemporary Czech and Slovak type design (1985–2004)
13 October - 13 November 2005

e-a-t.05 Cieszyn (PL), The Silesian Castle of Art & Enterprise (May 24 - June 26, 2005)
e-a-t.04 Bratislava, Medium Gallery (March 17 - April 15, 2005)
e-a-t.03 The Hague, Royal Academy od Art (February 11 - March 2, 2005)
e-a-t.02 Prague, Museum of Decorative Arts (September 1 - 29, 2004)
e-a-t.01 Brno, House of Arts (June 17 - August 8, 2004)

e-a-t (experiment and typography) is a project which reunites designers from the Czech and Slovak Republics. e-a-t is the enthusiastic initiative of designers/curators Alan Záruba (CZ) and Johanna Balušíková (SK). The show focuses on projects which document the development of designers’ ideas. The e-a-t exhibition presents the various type design projects in large format posters (1.5 x 1 m) which unite the form and function to support the individual stories. Creative processes are documented in large numbers of sketches and notes. To complement the variety of projects we consider worth displaying, there is also multimedia work and printed matter, both from commissioned and independent work. The goal is to distribute information about new projects through several e-a-t exhibitions, regularly updated website e-a-t.org, lecture series and publication ‘We Want You To Love Type’.

Organised by The Brumen Foundation in collaboration with Alba Design Press and International Centre of Graphic Arts.



Raymond Pettibon
American contemporary artist, recipient of the Grand Prize of Honor at the 25th Biennial of Graphic Arts
Auxiliary exhibition at the 26th Biennial of Graphic Arts
23 June - 02 October 2005

The American artist Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) was awarded the Grand Prize of Honor at the 25th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana (2003) for his work Plots on Loan, a book of lithographs and texts. Thus he joins a prestigious group of Grand Prize winners, who as a result are given the opportunity to present an independent exhibition at the Biennial. The relationship between text and image plays a crucial role in Pettibon’s art. Through the combination of text and image, which derives from the language of comic books, he creates a unique hybrid, a hodgepodge of quotations lifted from various contexts, which he then inserts into a new story. In his work we detect the memories, approximate quotations, feelings, ideas, and pictures that have come to him in his reading of a variety of authors, from contemporary literature to St. Augustine and the Bible. Curator Božidar Zrinski.

The Most Beautiful Prints
Slovene Graphic Art of the Past 50 Years
Auxiliary exhibition at the 26th Biennial of Graphic Arts
23 June - 02 October 2005

This exhibition offers a selection of the “most beautiful” or, perhaps, most characteristic examples of Slovene graphic art created between the years of 1955 and 2005, that is, from the time of the first International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana to the present day. Over the past half-century, Slovene graphic art has boasted numerous prominent artists, met high standards, and achieved international recognition.
The selection presents works by the following artists: Janez Bernik, Viktor Bernik, Bogdan Borčič, Riko Debenjak, Nuša in Srečo Dragan, Bojan Gorenc, Drago Hrvacki, Zdenko Huzjan, Irwin, Božidar Jakac, Danilo Jejčič, Andrej Jemec, Zmago Jeraj, Boris Jesih, Bogoslav Kalaš, Janez Knez, Metka Krašovec, Sonja Lamut, Lojze Logar, Vladimir Makuc, Adriana Maraž, Živko Marušič, France Mihelič, Zoran Mušič, Valentin Oman, Dušan Pirih Hup, Marjan Pogačnik, Marij Pregelj, Jože Slak, Lojze Spacal, Zora Stančič, Gabrijel Stupica, Marko Šuštaršič, Sašo Vrabič, Franco Vecchiet, Marjan Vojska, Edvard Zajec, Karel Zelenko.
Curator Ješa Denegri.

The First Line
Avant-Garde and Alternative Printers and Presses in Slovenia from Conceptualism to the Present
Auxiliary exhibition at the 26th Biennial of Graphic Arts
23 June - 02 October 2005

The phrase “the first line,” or “vanguard,” with its military sound, is often applied in art, and not just any form of art, but specifically avant-garde practices. The avant-garde and alternative works in the exhibition The First Line, which were created over the past forty years, span two different sociopolitical systems and two different prevailing art paradigms, each of which defined what was radical and avant-garde in different ways both socially and aesthetically. They help us establish the line of development in Slovene art from the initial emergence of conceptual practice to today, when the paradigms of conceptualism have become an integral part of what is art. The selection of printed matter in the exhibition The First Line includes artist books, posters, fliers, invitations, and other mass-reproduced artist-designed materials, as well as periodicals, advertisements, pamphlets, art books, Internet projects, wallpaper, mail art, artifacts, and corporate identities.
Curators: Lilijana Stepančič, Božidar Zrinski, Breda Škrjanec.

Simultanke
The Creative World of Sonia Delaunay
7 April - 19 May 2005

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) was part of the historical avant-garde. The exhibition in Ljubljana is the first show devoted to Sonia Delaunay in this part of the world. The exhibited works, on loan from distinguished French cultural institutions, are rarely displayed in public because of their fragility and historic value. From the Musée Zadkine in Paris comes the legendary two-meter-long artist book La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jeanne de France, which Delaunay created in 1913 in collaboration with Blaise Cendrars. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has loaned 85 works created between 1913 and 1974 - photographs of Delaunay's theater costumes, sketches for posters, drawings, gouaches, lithographs, etchings, and covers designed for artist books. The Musée de l'Impression sur Étoffes, in Mulhouse, has contributed fashion accessories and fabric patterns, while Delaunay's graphic plates come from the Saint-Denis Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, her buttons come from Galerie 1900-2000 in Paris and artists book come from Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle.

The exhibition catalogue Simultanke, containing texts by Tanja Mastnak, Guy Schraenen, and Petra Timmer, will be published in both Slovene and English.

Sunday guide visits by Guy Schraenen, Marija Starič Jenko & Almira Sadar, and Lilijana Stepančič.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the extraordinary contribution by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

In cooperation with National Gallery in Ljubljana and Institut français Charles Nodier in Ljubljana.
Sponsored by Adria Airways, d.d.

2004 Exhibitions
Eduard Čehovin, SK04
Matej Andraž Vogrinčič
Grafika/Grafik
Bound/Less Borders
Graffiti Artists
Point d'ironie

The Partisans in Print
30 November 2004 - 20 March 2005


This historical and socio-cultural study exhibition presents graphic art creativity and printing activities by Partisans in Slovenia during World War II. Exhibited are prints, book illustrations, leaflets, posters and images on partisan banknotes. The exhibited works are courtesy of the Arhiv Republike Slovenije, the Muzej novejše zgodovine Slovenije, the Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, the Narodni muzej Slovenije, and the Pokrajinski muzej Ptuj.

A book with texts in Slovene and English languages by Lilijana Stepančič, On Partisan Art Exhibitions; Rastko Močnik, Symbolic Policy of Partisans; Božo Repe, The Partisan Press; Donovan Pavlinec, The Partisan Print and Graphic Art; Andrej Šemrov, The Partisan Means of Payment; and Breda Škrjanec, Partisan Workshops and Printing Works was published to accompany the exhibition.

Sunday guide visits: Donovan Pavlinec, Božo Repe, Janez Stanovnik, Breda Škrjanec. Public guide visit: Alenka Gerlovič and Ignacij Gregorač.

In cooperation with Muzej novejše zgodovine Slovenija.

Eduard Čehovin, SK04
28 September - 7 November 2004

Every month between 21 January and 27 May 2004, Eduard Čehovin, a prominent graphic designer and professor of typography at the Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, exhibited a new large artistic poster on a Metropolis billboard at the intersection of Aškerčeva and Slovenska Roads in Ljubljana. The SK04 project marked the centenary of the birth of the Slovene avant-garde poet Srečko Kosovel, which was also evident from the title of the project, composed of the poet's initials and the last two numbers of the year of his birth, as well as the centenary. The posters featured visually reworked poems from Integrals, the legendary collection of poems still shrouded in myth.
The exhibition, transferred to the gallery premises, offers a new perspective on the project. Outside of the gallery, the works functioned by virtue of their visual differences from the standard images advertising consumer goods and services. In the gallery, the specific fine art language, deriving from the historical Russian avant-garde, comes to the fore, as well as the related social, cultural and artistic paradigms and connotations.

Sunday guided visit: Eduard Čehovin.



Matej Andraž Vogrinčič, 10,000 Balls
15 July - 15 August 2004
Proreklam-Europlakat Billboards

Matej Andraž Vogrinčič has been creating site-specific works in urban and natural environments since the early 1990s. 10,000 Balls is the title of his poster project, exhibited on 100 Proreklam-Europlakat billboards around Slovenia. The image is a documentary photograph of his own open-air art project in Perth, Australia, where the artist filled an abandoned construction pit with ten thousand balls. The poster project is, therefore, a kind of recycling and multiplication of his own work.



Grafika / Grafik, 1950-1980-2000
23 June - 29 August 2004

The exhibition presents Slovene and Swedish graphic art creativity from the 1950s to date. The part of the exhibition called Grafika presents a selection of prints produced between 1950 and 1980 by Slovene artists, which are included in the MGLC collection, and the part called Grafik presents a selection of contemporary Swedish prints created between 1980 and 2000. This part has been organised by the Swedish Institute of Stockholm. Slovene graphic art creativity is represented with prints on paper, while the Swedish section includes prints on paper as well as installations and prints on textiles and glass. The selections of works from the two periods share a spirit of experimentation - in the first decades after World War II it showed primarily as research into the uses of different traditional printing techniques on a single piece of paper, while in the decades at the end of the century it was a search for new presentational forms and prints on surfaces other than paper.

The exhibiting artists:
Asa Andersson, Hakan Berg, Elina Druker, Ulla Fries, Peder Josefsson, Fredrik Lindqvist, Lina Nordenström, Lars Nyberg, Helmtrud Nyström, Vera Ohlsson, Philip von Schantz, Asa Stjerna, Per Gunnar Thelander, Jukka Vänttinen, Brita Weglin and Jože Ciuha, Riko Debenjak, Štefan Galič, Danilo Jejčič, Boris Jesih, Lojze Logar, Vladimir Makuc Lojze Spacal.

A brochure with a text by Karl Haskel and Mikael Kihlman, Swedish Graphic Art - From Tradition to the Future in Slovene and Swedish languages was published to accompany the exhibition.



Bound/Less Borders
19 - 20 June 2004

In 2002, the Goethe Institute in Munich gave an incentive for an art project connecting the countries of South-East Europe. Than Goethe Institute in Belgrade invited artists to create new works for billboards and to participate with them at a travelling exhibition around the region. In Ljubljana, these works in the form of large prints on plastic foil are exhibited in the MGLC Gallery. The images reflect economic, political and artistic realities and post-war traumas. They represent a critique of exclusion, non-cooperation, nationalism and turbo-capitalism, and humorously play with new status symbols and old stereotypes about nations and people from this part of Europe.

The exhibiting artists:
Albanija: Alban Hajdinaj, Edi Hila, Adrian Paci, Andri Sala
Bosna in Hercegovina: Šejla Kamerić, Nebojša Šerić Šoba, Group Trio, Kurt & Plasto iz Bolgarija: Alla Georgieva, Kiril Prashkov, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Pravdoljub Ivanov
Črna gora: Milija Pavićević, Igor Rakčević & Lazar Pejović, Jelena Tomašević
Hrvaška: Marin Gril, Vlado Martek, Ivan Šeremet, Leo Vukelić
Makedonija: Hristina Ivanoska, Slavica Janešlieva, Antoni Mazlevski, Žaneta Vangeli
Romunija: Subreal Group, Alina Pentac & Nicolae Comanescu, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Stefan Cosma & Daniel Gontz, Mircea Cantor & Gabriela Vanga
Slovenija: Davide Grassi, Vadim Fishkin, Ive Tabar, Vuk Ćosić
Srbija: Tanja Ristovski Theuretzbacher, Željka Jović, Svetlana Đorđević, 1+1+1+1=1 (Herma Auguste Wittstock, Katerina Katsifaraki, Noemi Martinez Chico, Ivana Smiljanić).

The Bound/Less Borders catalogue with texts by the curators of the project in English Language was published to accompany the exhibition.

A discussion led by Jurij Krpan and Biljana Tomić forms part of the exhibition.

The exhibition was prepared in co-operation with the Geothe Institute in Belgrade and Galerija Kapelica in Ljubljana.


Graffiti Artists
23 March - 23 May 2004

In recent years, graffiti has been a popular and recognisable mode of expression of the Slovene urban subculture. Upon the invitation of the MGLC, graffiti artists transferred part of the street scene into the gallery and created new, commissioned works. The exhibition presents tags, pieces and bombers sprayed and partly painted directly onto the gallery walls. They differ according to their style and content, and thus they speak about the local provenance of individual graffitists.
The exhibition presents sixteen graffiti artists from Maribor, Celje and Ljubljana. Their identities are not revealed; they are identified merely by their signatures, i.e., their tags.

A book Graffitists with texts in Slovene and English languages by Lilijana Stepančič, Graffiti as Contemporary Monument; Božidar Zrinski, Masterpieces; Nataša Petrešin, Interview With Joke42, Lion the Tiger, Making Graffiti in the Gallery; and Nataša Velikonja, Graffiti: Revolutionary Street Reading was published to accompany the exhibition.

Sunday guided visits: Pavle Čelik, Katerina Mirović, Božidar Zrinski.


Point d'Ironie
13 January - 29 February 2004

For the first time in Ljubljana and for the first time ever in a gallery, MGLC presents Point d'Ironie, a French art project published in Paris since 1997 by agnes b and edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Point d'Ironie is a hybrid newspaper comprising eight pages and printed on quality newsprint. It has always the same format and size, but it is always different because of the new artist creating it. The publication is published in editions of 100,000 to 300,000 copies, and it is distributed free of charge in museums, galleries, art schools, and in agnes b boutiques around the world.

A symposium A History of Other Print in Slovenia by the participants Barbara Borčić, Maja Licul, Katarina Toman Kracina, Tadej Pogačar, Lilijana Stepančič, Breda Škrjanec, Tomo Vignjević, Melita Zajc and Božidar Zrinski forms part of the exhibition.

The exhibition is supported by the French Institute Charles Nodier.

2003 Exhibitions
Ivan Picelj
Grand Prix
In Print
Leon Golub

Ivan Picelj
Graphic Art Opus 1957-2003
24 October - 21 December 2003

The exhibition presents nine graphic art portfolios, created between 1957 and 2002, and it is a kind of retrospective of Ivan Picelj's graphic art creativity. The artist was born in 1924. He is one of the most prominent Croatian artists, a representative of geometric abstract art and a multi-disciplinary artist. In 1951 he co-founded the EXAT 51 group (Experimental Atelier), which, in its famous manifesto, dedicated itself to abstract art and argued for total freedom of artistic expression and experimentation. He became a member of the Denise René Gallery in Paris. In the early 1960s, Zagreb became one of the first and most powerful centres of the international neo-constructivist movement due to a number of the New Tendencies exhibitions initiated by Ivan Picelj.

A catalogue Ivan Picelj with a text by Ješa Denegri in Slovene and English languages was published to accompany the exhibition.

A talk between the artist and the fine art critic Brane Kovič, special guide visit by the author of the text from the catalogue Ješa Denegri, and a lecture The Onset of Geometric Art by Lev Menaše are organized to accompany the exhibition.

Sunday guided visits: Ladeja Košir and Lilijana Stepančič.

The exhibition was prepared in co-operation with the Rigo Gallery from Novi grad/Cittanova and the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in Slovenia.


Grand Prix
3 April - 4 May 2003
Jakopičeva galerija

The exhibition is a historical and documentary introduction to the 25th International Biennial of Graphic Arts and, at the same time, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Biennial. It aims to present a comprehensive overview of prints produced by Slovene artists and awarded at the Ljubljana Biennials and other graphic art exhibitions around the world from the end of the politics of Real Socialism in the former Yugoslavia to date. The exhibition speaks about cultural policy in Slovenia after World War II, about its promotion in the framework of the international art world and about its artistic creativity, which followed significant global artistic tendencies - shaped, during the first two decades after World War II, by the Venice Biennial and the Kassel Documenta. Awards as an art institution are a combination of the persuasiveness of artworks and the taste of those who bestow them.
The exhibited prints are mainly original awarded works. They are courtesy of the artists or their families, and of the Galerija Božidar Jakac, the Goriški muzej, MGLC, the Moderna galerija, and the Pokrajinski muzej Ptuj.

The exhibiting artists:
Božidar Jakac, Lojze Spacal, France Mihelič, Zoran Mušič, Riko Debenjak, Vladimir Makuc, Janez Boljka, Jože Spacal, Kiar Meško, Bogdan Borčić, Gorazd Šefran, Adriana Maraž, Jože Ciuha, Zvest Apollonio, Boris Jesih, Tinca Stegovec, Klavdij Tutta, Lojze Logar, Štefan Galič, Samuel Grajfoner, Peter Ciuha, Zora Stančič and Mojca Zlokarnik.

A brochure with texts in Slovene language by Zoran Kržišnik and Tomislav Vignjević was published to accompany the exhibition.



In Print
20 March - 11 May 2003

In Print is a travelling exhibition of contemporary British prints published by the London-based Paragon Press since the mid-1990s and organised by the British Council. It features a selection of prints by the most prominent contemporary British artists working in different art techniques. The older generation committed to abstract art is represented by Terry Frost and Patrick Heron, the New British Sculpture by Richard Deacon, Bill Woodrow and Anish Kapoor, conceptual artists by Anya Gallaccio, and Young British Artists by Gary Hume, the Chapman brothers, Marc Quinn, Damien Hirst, Mat Collishaw, Peter Doig and Sarah Morris.
The main characteristic of the exhibited prints is their high professional level of execution. The works have been made in series, not as individual prints. These art images are mainly the result of computer work. Charles Boot-Clibborn from the Paragon Press believes that digital technologies can transform the traditional graphic art medium and that they are interesting for artists not primarily engaged in graphic art, since they are based on experimentation that widens and enriches their art practice.

Sunday guide visits: Tanja Mastnak and Breda Škrjanec.

The British Council published the In Print catalogue with the text by Patrick Elliott.



Leon Golub
Does Art Bite?
16 January - 9 March 2003

Leon Golub is one of the most influential artists in the world. He was born in Chicago in 1922. His works are reactions to topical cultural, social and political themes, such as the violation of human rights and the trampling of human dignity by the powerful, and they call for the surpassing of style, formalism and the narrow limitations of the art world.
The exhibition is the first presentation of Leon Golub's works in Slovenia. It presents his graphic art opus and parts of his drawing opus from 1947 to date, selected precisely by the artist himself.
The title of the exhibition is a paraphrase of the title Leon Golub, Do Paintings Bite?, a book of the artist's essays edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and published by the Cantz publishing house in 1997.

A symposium Do art Bite? by the participants AC Molotov, Marko Brecelj, Rastko Močnik, Miran Mohor, Borut Savski and Igor Španjol forms part of the exhibition.

Sunday guide visits: Boge Dimovski, Jurij Krpan, Goran Medjugorac, Tadej Pogačar and Lilijana Stepančič.

A brochure with a text by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Does Art Bite in Slovene and English languages was published to accompany the exhibition.