"Venture"

Attila Csörgo, Vadim Fiškin, Alexander Gutke, Irwin, Magnus Larsson Yuri Leiderman Kazimir Malevich 1985 (Belgrade), Goran Petercol, Marjetica Potrc, Tobias Putrih, Tadej Pogacar, Guia Rigvava Galerija Gregor Podnar

6. 03 - 17. 04. 2004

Attila Csörgo's works embody transitive/contingent states involving technology that plays with the viewer's senses and ways of seeing thus let him enter the realms inherent in permutable structures and perceptual states. For the opening exhibition "Venture" the gallery presents his series of photographs Spherical Vortex (1999-2000). Taken with consecutive or long exposures they reveal the path of a rotating flashlight bulb made by connecting three separate whirling movements of different velocity. Attila Csörgo participated at the 8th Istanbul Biennial last year and showed his work first time in Ljubljana (together with Antal Lakner) at the Galerija Škuc in 1999.

Vadim Fiškin works with various media ranging from photography to drawing, from c-print and sculptural works to installations, where he builds and employs different technical devices. Open to diverse interpretations Fiškin's work Molecule (Marble/Straw) "communicates the relations between science, personal experience, desire and imagination, metaphysics and pragmatism, artificial and real and finds subtle linkage that arouses the viewers' curiosity, yet leaves them guessing as to its ultimate. " (L. Páldi)

The looped video Transition (A 1978 Pontiac Firebird driving through a forest of pine trees) by Alexander Gutke, shows a 1978 Pontiac Firebird, driving along a forest road in the Swedish countryside. The trees lining the sides of the road are reflected on the car's shiny surface as drifting by. The sequence is similar to the kind of transitional scene in a film, used to describe a movement between two places, two events or maybe a scene describing a movement, a shift, in a more symbolical sense, a change of mind or a change of directions.

Since the mid-80s the artist group Irwin has been working with various media, from painting to public art from sculptural works and installations to publishing. With their "retro principle" method of work the group combines different motives and signs from the field of political and art movements in history and transforms them into a visual field that re-contextualises and deconstructs various ideologies of political and cultural domains. "Venture" presents mixed media works from the early 90ies with the object Wheel of the Wheels (2000).

Magnus Larsson explores the in-between space of traditional portrait painting and contemporary media image. While working precisely with the time-consuming oil on canvas technique he mixes elements from historical portrait painting, fashion images, and cartoons. With his androgynous figures such as on Portrait-Untitled (2003) Larsson evokes a state of suspense between the individual as a demand of a portrait and the collectively consumed media image.

Yuri Leiderman both as a writer and artist interested in rethinking and examining a very self-referential concept of art. Most of his works derive from stories and occurrences connected to his very personal life experiences and obsessions, and transformed into a sophisticated system of visual signs and codes. The gallery presents drawings which belong to the cycle where Leiderman deals with the visualisation of his writings. The projects such as The International exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show) or the Last Futurist Show 0.10 in 1985 in Belgrade were among the significant events of the 1980s.

The pieces of Anonymous authors and the paintings of Kazimir Malevich 1985 (Belgrade) are linked to the Salon de Fleurus in 41 Spring Street in Soho/NY, presented in 2000 at Galerija Škuc in Ljubljana, and in 2002 at the Sydney Biennial and at the Withney Biennial, for instance. "All of these projects [...] raised many discussions about originality (and other "modernists myths") in the most radical manner, especially given that they appeared in circumstances far remote from artistic and ideological schemes that shaped Western art history, art market and modes of institutionalisation. " (B. Dimitrijevic)

Goran Petercol's work is a continous process of a self-contained system; a process that in its structural opennes -one partial element always tells us something about the whole, which itself remains elusive -had already become apparent in his earlier works. His drawings from the series Copying (1975-76) demonstrate a historical affinity to the analytical painting of the 1970ies. In this series Goran Petercol uses his earlier, gestural drawings as models, but the way he depicts the motives deviates from the original Informal style. He translates an existing system (of values) into an opposing code and calls this process the "recovery of form".

Marjetica Potrc is interested in contemporary urban spaces and the connected issues like self-sustainability, the empowerment of the individual, security etc. The large number of case studies and hybrid constructions, which she has built in museums and galleries, as well as her series of prints and drawings present us with diverse phenomena and aspects of contemporary urban living around the globe. Her projects embrace different aesthetics and ways of thinking and can best be approached as comparative studies at the intersection of practices linked to urbanism, visual anthropology, and architecture. We are showing a selection of her ink-jet print series Animal Sightings (2001), first presented at her solo exhibition in Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin in autumn 2001.

The Travelling Globes (1990) are prototypes of the concept underlying Tadej Pogacar's P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art which was founded in the winter 1990 since as a paralel artistic institution. The two globes anticipate P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.'s flexible nesting in existing organisms. However, in contrast to the simulated structure of the artist museum, which creeps into several institutional systems of society, art and culture (museums, schools, galleries, social groups) as a guest/parasite, subjecting the mechanisms of its host to reflective and sometimes very sober analysis, the locations to which the two globes travel are only weakly precoded in terms of culture, they are wild places (i.e.backyards and natural landscapes). Produced by the gallery for last year's Present Future section at Artissima 10, The international Art Fair in Turin Possible but Abstract (Football Player with a Ball) is one of the recent installational project of Tobias Putrih. The work, which is based on scientific references to the work of A.G. Bell, Buckminster Fuller and d'Arby, is linked both to the concept of tetragonal structures and to computer animation programmes. The artists sees the different parts (animation, objects and drawings) both as mediators of the in-between experience of intimate artistic activity and a playful approach towards modernistic models and a low-tech production of virtual reality.

In his video work Are They Rich? (1995) Guia Rigvava shows a static view on a busy street in Munich. The appearance of the people passing by in the video is rather accidental and casual. Every time when someone passes by the voice of the artist asks the question "Are They Rich". This work can be connected to the very social and economical changes that Guia Rigvava experienced moving from post-Soviet Russia into a new environment. Hence, the work bears a multi-layered metaphoric reading of Are They Rich as a kind of mental state.

Presentation of Galerija Gregor Podnar

Galerija Gregor Podnar was established in July 2003 in Kranj nearby Ljubljana as part of the Association DUM. The Director of the gallery, Gregor Podnar had been running Galerija Škuc in Ljubljana as Artistic Director from 1996 till June 2003. While taking part and working on several international curatorial projects, he was the curator of the U3 - Triennial of Slovene Contemporary Art / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana in 2000 and together with Hans-Ulrich Obrist he curated the Off-biennale of the 24th International Graphic Biennale in Ljubljana in 2001. He established the art fair programme of Galerija Škuc and participated at three international fairs in Basel (Liste 02 and Liste 03), Berlin (Art Forum 2002) and Moscow (Art Moscow 2002 and 2003). In autumn 2003 Gregor Podnar took part the first time under the name of Galerija Gregor Podnar at Art Forum Berlin and at Artissima 10 in Turin. Location Kranj The city of Kranj has both traditional and recent connections to contemporary art. In the beginning of the 60-ies the first actions of the conceptual avant-garde group OHO had started in Kranj, and also two of the Gallery's artists: Miha Knific and Tobias Putrih come form the city. With an innovative addressing of the local public we aim to mediate art activities and make a vivid exchange possible between the capital Ljubljana and Kranj, as well as widen awareness of a local tradition in contemporary art practices.

General programme

By continuing his line of previous curatorial and gallery work Gregor Podnar aims at running a production centre, which plans to collaborate with different commercial and non-commercial galleries and institutions within and outside Europe. In 2004 we are working on different projects with the following galleries: Galerie Eugen Lendl (Graz), Lisson Gallery (London), Galerie Markus Richter (Berlin), Galerie Baukunst (Köln), and Max Protetch Gallery (New York). Currently, the gallery works as part of the Association DUM but on a longer-term it wishes to develop in parallel to this a business structure in the art market based on private partnership. Exhibition programme 2004 In April 2004, after the inaugural exhibition "Venture" Galerija Gregor Podnar will show new filmic works by Miha Knific (Kranj/Ljubljana) and in June will present video works by Yael Bartana (Tel Aviv/Amsterdam). Then follows the connected presentation of Tobias Putrih (Ljubljana/New York) and the British duo John Wood & Paul Harrison (Bristol) in collaboration with Galerie Markus Richter in Berlin. This will also be shown at the Galerie Markus Richter and at Galerie Bauhaus in Cologne. In October Galerija Gregor Podnar presents recent works by Goran Petercol and Dan Perjovschi. The two international artists from Zagreb and Bucharest are invited to work together on a joint project for the first time. The solo exhibition "Geographies" in November by Moscow based artist Yuri Leiderman will introduce his new cycles of works. At the end of 2004 the Gallery plans to host the group exhibition "Nothingness" curated by Neil Robert Wenman from Lisson Gallery, London, in collaboration with Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz, with works by Art & Language, Manfred Erjautz, Ceal Floyer, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Sol Lewitt, Jonathan Monk, Werner Reiterer, and others. Art Fairs In 2004 Galerija Gregor Podnar will participate at three international art fairs: Liste 04. The Young Art Fair in Basel, Art Forum Berlin 2004, and Artissima 11 in Turin. The Gallery represents well-known, internationally working artists from Eastern European centres, like Attila Csörgo, Vadim Fiškin, Irwin, Yuri Leiderman, Goran Petercol, and Giva Rigvava, as well as young emerging artists from a wider context, like Alexander Gutke, Magnus Larsson or Tobias Putrih. Works are also available from Olafur Eliasson, Antal Lakner, Kazimir Malevic 1985, Tadej Pogacar and Marjetica Potrc. The Gallery offers art-consulting services on request. Exhibition "Venture" On March 5, 2004 the new gallery premises on Savska Street 34 in Kranj opens with the group exhibition "Venture" introducing selected works by the artists of Galerija Gregor Podnar.

The opening hours of the gallery are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 12. A.M. till 20. P.M. and by appointment.

For additional information, please contact Alenka Štrukelj (mobile: +386 31 866 041 or e-mail alenka.gpodnar@siol.net).