THE PRIZES OF THE 31ST Biennial of Graphic Arts 

The Grand Prize winner of the 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts is Ištvan Išt Huzjan.
The award of the jury (research residency) was given to Declan Clarke, the special mention of the jury to Pilar Quinteros and Peter Gidal received the lifetime achievement award.

The XXXI edition of the Biennale of Graphic Arts expands the very concepts of print making, graphic work, reproduction and circulation by including installations, films, archival materials, public interventions, sculptures and drawing. Nicola Lees successfully managed to create in each room a convincing dialogue between different works, problematizing both the history of the Biennale and the potentiality of new commission. The exhibition brings together young artists and historical figures, and its breath explores the state of the printing medium in many challenging directions.

Grand Prix: Ištvan Išt Huzjan
Istvan Ist Huzjan’s installation reflects – both literally and metaphorically – a complex web of historical references and formal devices in all their stratifications. The work is a polyphony of nature and memory, art history and the artist’s intimate responses to official narratives. The jury acknowledged the artist’s capacity to create a multi-layered structure that brings together locality and globality.
The work in the Biennial: Earth Reflections (2015) and Exchange Banner – OHO and Walter de Maria (2015). The work was made for the 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts.

   

Jury Prize (research residency): Declan Clarke
The jury proposes to award a residency to Declan Clarke, whose film explores time and politics, the materiality of information and the physicality of the borders in a fascinating way. The work successfully incorporates graphic elements and the stillness of images, and in so doing it exemplify the curatorial strategy to expend the formal and conceptual framework of the Biennale. The work problematizes the tension between personal memories and the wider socio-political context in Europe.
The work in the Biennial: Group Portrait with Explosives (2014)

Jury special mention: Pilar Quinteros
Recognising the Biennale as an important platform for young and emerging artists. The special mention goes to Pilar Quinteros for the energy and intelligence that she brought to her commission.
The work in the Biennial: Cathedral of Freedom (2015). The work was made for the 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts.

Life Achievement Award: Peter Gidal
The jury wishes to express its admiration for a life-long commitment to restless experimentation. Peter Gidal’s participation in the Biennial symbolizes the curatorial inclusion of multi-faced practices capable to explore and surpass the boundaries between literature and visual arts, experimental cinema and photography, representation, technology, conservation and dissemination.
The works in the Biennial: Index Books (1993– ), Ten Rare Lost Books; A Book Dealer's Nightmare (2011)

Photos. MGLC Archive. Photo: Jaka Babnik.

 

 

Enter your e-mail:
ARCHIVE

PLATEAURESIDUE: Sub Persona

25. 10.–29. 12. 2019

MGLC – Švicarija

 

You are invited to attend the opening of the exhibition by the PLATEAURESIDUE duo (Aljaž Celarc & Eva Pavlič Seifert) on Friday, 25 October 2019, at 19.00, presenting their new Sub Persona research and exhibition project. The exhibition is part of the year-long programme of Švicarija pursuing the motto community, art and nature, which in 2019 focuses on the analysis of the state of independent journalism and the right of the public to information. The artists, whose practice usually interlaces ecology and art, this time examine the state of forest ecosystems and the human impact on them due to past and present forest management. They will present their multimedia installation for the first time, which promotes the development of sensory thinking and questions the contemporary understanding of the environment and man’s attitude towards it.

During the preparations for the project, the artists talked to people who are directly involved in maintaining forests and have differing opinions about how they should be managed and perceived. Forests possess many functions, ranging from ecological, economic to cultural, and provide us all with a quality life on many levels. The present-day urban population often perceives forests as spaces of unspoilt nature even though they have been completely transformed by the centuries of human management. It is precisely the tradition of encroaching upon and exploiting forests that dictates the responsibility of mankind to manage them in a sustainable way, to take care of the consequences of bad practice and to eliminate the effects of climate change. The artists explore how contemporary forest management and forestry approach the goals dictated by the Pro Silva Pan-European sustainable management model, which was developed in 1989, based on the Slovenian tradition of selective felling. The goal of the Pro Silva model is to preserve all key forest functions for future generations: ecosystem, soil and climate protection, production of wood and wood products, recreation and preservation of cultural heritage.

PLATEAURESIDUE is the imaginary identity of geographer and artist Aljaž Celarc and art historian Eva Pavlič Seifert. Their practice is concerned with exploring landscape ecology and uses new media to search for new ways of raising public awareness. Accordingly, they always give a voice to the participants in their projects, natural forms such as rocks, air, organisms and other units of matter, which they reorganise into new unusual forms and new media systems. The artist duo lives and works in Novi Kot, in the hinterland of the forests of Mount Gotenica and Snežnik Plateau.

 

Plateauresidue: Sub Persona, 2019 (video still)

RogLab Open: Active Aging, exhibition of prototypes

Opening: 10 October 2019, at 7 pm

MGLC – Švicarija, Ljubljana

 

The exhibition, at the conclusion of the international project RogLab Open: Active Aging, will feature four award-winning prototypes from the proposals submitted that best addressed the problems of the elderly. The teens who triggered of Beatlemania and the hippies from the Woodstock era are now around seventy years old. RogLab points out precisely to their needs and presents solutions that allow them to live an active and independent life: an intergenerational playground toy by André Vanzolin (Brazil), a hydroponic garden for the physically disabled by Eamon Durey (Northern Ireland), additions for steps by Dušan Uršič (Slovenia) and classically tailored clothing for fashion-conscious seniors, developed by Ina Nathalie Bölsing, Kaja Čufer, Tajda Dražić and Katarina Ekart from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering under the mentorship of Alenka More (Slovenia). All these prototypes will be on view at Švicarija until 20 October 2019.

The exhibition was produced in collaboration between RogLab (MGML) and MGLC.

The project is supported by the City of Ljubljana.

Part of the partner network of the Center for Creativity, this project is co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Slovenia.

 

Dušan Uršič: additions for steps, prototypes

Marathon Guided Tour: Exhibitions are visited ON FOOT!

Photo: Urška Boljkovac. Archive: MGLC.

On Saturday, 21 September, for European Mobility Week, we have prepared the themed guided tour Exhibitions are visited ON FOOT!, whilst we also host the Biennial Doors Open Day.

You will be taken around the venues of this year's Biennial by Museum Information Officer, Gregor Dražil. The meeting point for the guided tour is in front of MGLC at 11.00, and in front of the National Gallery of Slovenia at 12.30.

The tour will be accompanied by impro interventions in collaboration with Impro liga, therefore get ready for one of the more exciting guided tours so far!

P. S.: Please wear appropriate footwear (our hedgehog has also put on his trainers).