Fields of intimacy, transitions and potentials of the medium
Tinkara Babić, Bad Artist & Iva Suhadolnik Gregorin, Lučka Centa, Jurij Hartman, Ana Janež, Žoel Kastelic, Rene Ketiš, Anja Kočar, Ana Kotar Škarjak, Laura Krajnc, Agate Lielpētere, Matej Mihevc, Hristijan Nashulovski, Hana Podvršič, Dunja Rahovsky Šuligoj, Olja Simčič Jerele, Katarina Snoj, Tajda Stiplovšek Jug, Januš Suša, Iza Štrumbelj Oblak, Lea Topolovec & Yana Deliyska, Lara Žagar
Exhibitions featuring the work of young artists have flourished over the last decade and have become a regular fixture of many galleries, cultural centres and festivals. While the first exhibition entitled Premiere, organised by the Center for Contemporary Arts in 2008, was one of the few events in Slovenia that gave a platform for a professional presentation to artists who were just finishing their artistic studies and entering the art scene, today it is only one of many, which are very different in their curatorial approaches and scope. Its continuity and visibility are nevertheless seen as an important contribution to how contemporary artistic practices are being followed in Slovenia. A group exhibition, based on a selection of artists who applied to an open call, is one way of looking at the developments in the field of visual arts and the potentials it brings. At the same time, it is a symptomatic trace of the results of academic study environments and systems that are being established (or not) within the art field. The exhibition presents us with the current approaches to the treatment of artistic media – which, of course, also go beyond long-established fine art practices – and seeks to connect both those artists who have already developed a recognisable artistic language and those who are developing their practices at the end of their studies at academies. It gives a face to new generations of artists, while decentralising the possibility of their presentation within our region.
This year, the Premiere Triennial presents no less than 21 works of art by 24 artists. They reveal the evolving field of contemporary creativity, which poses new challenges, through the presentation of studied and in-depth research methods of creation in contemporary painting and sculpture, intermedia practices, photography and animated film, performance and installation, and fuse the works with an articulated meaning. A unified thematic framework for the exhibition eludes us, as the open call is not defined by its content – the curatorial approach is therefore shaped by the examination and selection of the works themselves – but it undoubtedly points to a tendency towards a different set of relations between the medium and the message, between the content of the work and its medium, between the work and the artist’s intimacy, and between the body and the space.
The selected artworks speak about the position of the artist as she confronts particular familiar challenges and initiatives, such as career expectations, bureaucratic pressures and self-organisation, and the experience of social roles within the artistic profession. The video installation Give Me Your Hand by Iza Štrumbelj Oblak, Lea Topolovec and Yana Deliyska uses documentary fiction to address the effectiveness of the family structure; whether biological, fictional or academic. The performance piece entitled Who is taking care of the caregiver? by Ana Kotar Škarjak points out the issues of care work. In their piece entitled Delam delo (Work and Labour Share the Same Word in Slovene) Bad Artist and Iva Suhadolnik Gregorin explore (the modernist) stereotype of an artist in his studio and comment on it through the photographic genre and the performative gesture. The artworks also deal with the field of intimacy in the context of a partnership or friendship (Agate Lielpētere’s painting series “Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes? (Yes.)” focuses on the intimate points of view of portraying her partner, Rene Ketiš translates snapshots of a circle of friends into artistic visual diary entitled Spodik) and wider social communities (Anja Kočar’s painting Lunch is produced using unintentional photographic details depicting scenes of dining). Focusing on the exploration of space, Dunja Rahovsky Šuligoj’s Blažilniki juxtaposes an intimate space with a snapshot of it, perceived through a device attuned to its materiality – thus searching for external relations between the self and the view of the space in which it is located. In contrast, Hana Podvršič aims to create an unpredictable space for the viewer to read and experience through objects and texts in her installation entitled Centrifuga (Centrifuge).
Social themes in the exhibited artworks are also reflected through ontological reflections on transience and transformation on the one hand and imagined futures on the other. Olja Simčič Jerele explores the relationship to the transience of (creation) using photography as a tool for measuring time in her work entitled Sanje, spodrsljaji in jecljanje (Dreams, Slip-ups and Stuttering). Januš Suša, with the installation entitled V spominu časa: modularnost forme (In the Memory of Time: Modularity of Form), represents every living system that is given time and its own rhythm. With his performance piece under the title Bloated, Hristijan Nashulovski investigates digital presence, the influence of algorithms, and the loss of bodily autonomy in the virtual space. Some of the artists turn to nature, namely: Laura Krajnc, who expresses humanity’s interconnectedness through a sculptural work from the series Moje, tvoje, naše pokrajine (My, Your, Our Landscapes); Lučka Centa with the soil-based installation Terra Mirra; and Lara Žagar, who captures the future potential of nature in a glass sculpture titled Re-teraformiranje (Re-Terraforming). Matej Mihevc contemplates utopian futures in his video game Tensor Edge Recon. In her animated film with the title Nov svet, nova sled (A New World, A New Trace), Žoel Kastelic raises the question of how far we are from coexistence with nature – and how much farther form it we may drift.
In their artworks, the artists also focus on building on the study process by reinterpreting the artistic medium, especially painting and sculpture. In her work entitle Žehta (Laundry) Tinkara Babić rinses and re-works her past paintings, documenting the process while being fascinated by the changing structure and texture of the medium. In her work Two Weeks in Every Year Katarina Snoj also focuses on the materiality of the medium of a painting and its layers – the disturbance caused by the application. With her sculptural installation Onkraj (Beyond) Tajda Stiplovšek Jug offers glimpses of an otherwise hidden materiality. She is also interested in the damaged and inner layers of an object, while inviting the public to intervene further in the work. The reading of an image is taken up by Jurij Hartman, whose precise hand-painted large-format diptych, titled World Pool Ball Association, mimics fabricated visual images, appropriates graphic signs and engages playfully with past and present signifiers and signifieds of the image. In Si upaš verjeti v nekaj tako negotovega? (Do You Dare to Believe in Something So Uncertain?), Ana Janež uses the processes of decoding and reassembling an image/painting, questioning its finality and message.
It is the latter idea that could sum up this year’s exhibition. Young artists participating in Premiere 2025 remain predominantly engaged in research processes, focused on their own space and medium. While addressing particular approaches to the fine arts and contemporary visual approaches, they do open up broader and current thematic interests (relationships, nature, time, the future, etc.), but more often they turn to personal stories or look for different points of view through which to read the artworks. Away from a purely illustrative aesthetic reflection of the world, using different dynamics of coping with a medium, they support the expected relevance in the field of contemporary art.
Curator: Maja Antončič
Text: Maja Antončič
Translation: Lingua service, d. o .o.
Proofreading: Lingua service, d. o. o.
Graphic design: Neža Penca
Pokrajinski muzej Celje – Center sodobnih umetnosti /
Celje Regional Museum – Center for Contemporary Arts
Supported by: Ministrstvo za kulturo RS, Mestna občina Celje