Alkatraz Gallery

This year’s focus of the festival is on exploration and comprehension of different aspects of borders, be those physical, optical, social, psychologic or purely spiritual, borders that both divide and connect. We will thus put on display works that explore the boundaries between the public and the private, between past and present etc. works that examine the limits of human perception and imagination and thus offer a deliberation on this phenomenon which is attracting lots of attention due to current events in the world.

One of the Festivals’ stations is Alkatraz Gallery, where RaumZeitPiraten – German art collective, will present a solo exhibition.  RaumZeitPiraten is a collective of German artists who create characteristic »techno« light installations, mobile and kinetic DIY sculptures made from repurposed opto-acoustic devices.  The collective this time occupies the whole gallery presenting a project that stems from the historical concept of the so-called Expanded Cinema from the 70’s. This, unlike classical movie production, combines movies with other technological means such as video, special effects, holograms etc. RaumZeitPiraten are presenting an ironic paraphrase of the Expanded Cinema: the viewer, immersed in a visually saturated space conglomerate turns into an active participant of this meta-narrative and multi-sensorial ’cinematic’ story.

At the opening of the exhibition, there will be a repeat of analogue screenings in front of the Alkatraz Gallery called Overhead  – project by students of High School of Design and Photography. These are analogue improvisations using overhead projectors where the attendees will demonstrate their creative skills in creating live visual narratives.

RaumZeitPiraten is an audio-visual, time and space changing art collective that consists of Tobias Daemgen, Jan Ehlen and Moritz Ellerich. They have been working together since 2007 under this name that hints at the inspirational Einstein’s concept of the four-dimensional Raumzeit (space-time), while as pirates they feel the need to freely play with these concepts outside the traditional frameworks of production.

You are kindly invited to the opening of “About the Impossibility of Borders” exhibition by RaumZeitPiraten art collective on 23 May, Thursday at 9.30 pm at Alkatraz Gallery. The exhibition is a part of the 13th International Festival of Lighting Guerrilla.

Production: Strip Core/Forum Ljubljana & High School of Design and Photography (screenings).
Co-production: Alkatraz Gallery/KUD Mreža

On display: 23 May 2019 – 15 June 2019

“The project Basic Bricks Of Logic 1 is the continuation of the artist’s collaboration with the Vienna gallery Schleifmüehlgasse resulting in the exhibition The Measure Of Profit (2014) and is designed as a minimalist sculpture installation. First and foremost, it speaks to the viewer through spatial physical and visual perception, the content of the message coming to the forefront after deeper consideration. There are two sculptures in the space: two parallel installations from wooden squares and foam. In terms of content, the constructions first seem rather abstract, but after a more careful examination of the installation and the sketches on the walls, it becomes clear that the two objects represent the four key curves of the logic of profit-driven economy. The first set represents the conceptual assumptions of profit logic. The second set shows how it works in practice based on statistics for the last seven decades.

The exhibition is an attempt at making the key elements of the logic that dominates and drives the economic and political environment in which we live immediately comprehensible. The first set represents the curves delineated by the logic in the abstract, conceptual world without the limitations of the real world, the logic being realisable in its presumed form. The second set represents the same curves but in the real world; as outlined in the past seventy years. A comparison between the two sets uncovers the logic’s entanglement in its own contradictions and the limits of the environment.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Julij Borštnik studied sculpting at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design from which he graduated in 2007. In 2005 he received the Student Prešeren Award and the international artists’ Essl Award. In 2008 he enrolled in the postgraduate programme of philosophy organised by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) in collaboration with the University of Nova Gorica. The main cycles of his artistic creation include The Future Of Work (a series of four feature-length documentaries in co-authorship with Abel Heijkamp), Osnovni zidaki logike (The Basic Bricks Of Logic) – The Measure Of Profit, Schleifmühlgasse Gallery, Vienna, Austria, 2014) and Potencialni Prostor (Potential Space – exhibitions Re-Generation at the Institute of Chemistry, 2018; the exhibition The Path at the Srečišče Gallery, 2013; the exhibition Impulse and Possibilities at the Trbovlje Workers’ Hall, 2011; a performative lecture at the Personal/Collective Festival, 2011). He regularly works with sculptor Katja Oblak in the fields of sculpting and video. Since 2008, he also devotes his time to work and organisation in the field of fine art pedagogics (sculpting, painting, animation) for various age groups. Since 2011, he also teaches sculpting at the Fine Arts Education Centre (LICE) in Ribnica, and drawing and sculpting at the School of Fine Arts in the Nova Gorica City Gallery which he co-founded.

You are kindly invited to the exhibition opening of Julij Borštnik’s Basic Bricks Of Logic 1 on 17 January, Thursday at 7 pm at Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana.

On display: 17 January 2019 – 8 February 2019

“Maruša Meglič is a talented artist who focuses mostly on the quality of exhibition experience rather than the quantity of art production. Although she is a relatively new name in the art world, her works are elaborated and thought through. The Site-specific exhibition at the Alkatraz Gallery reveals that she has a good sense of space when it comes to building spatial compositions, for which purification and simplicity are representative. The artist consistently uses this unusual approach, which we are not used to at the majority of other exhibitions. Frequently individual works themselves form a display, whereas here the medium of expression is the exhibition as a whole.

The project of Maruša Meglič, Every Man Is A Lonely Island, is a site-specific-art work, which adjusts to the Alkatraz Gallery and builds on its features. Thematically, the installation is a staged existential drama referring to a spectator and pressing them towards thinking about the meaning of life. The sun which is not the sun, the frames of a house that is not and a black floor, which denies everything, are multifaceted scenic metaphors of life and being.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Maruša Meglič was born in 1989 in Ljubljana. She graduated from Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in the field of painting (2012). She continued her education at a study exchange in Prague, at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design. She is currently finishing Master’s Degree in painting at ALUO in Ljubljana. She lives and works in Ljubljana. Maruša Meglič presented her works at the following solo exhibitions: Skin Deep (HOoST, Ljubljana, 2017), Warm Heart Faint of Heart (Chalton Gallery, London, 2016), the artist only needs a little (KIOSK Kino Šiška, Ljubljana, 2015), Some Rosary (Bežigrajska galerija, Ljubljana, 2013). She also participated in several group exhibitions in Slovenia (Škuc Gallery, 2016; Jakopič Gallery, 2016; MSUM +, 2015; MGLC, 2013; Gallery Alkatraz, 2012) and abroad (ESSL Museum, Vienna, 2015; Gallery Cortil, Rijeka, 2015 ; Constantin Brancusi Gallery, Bucharest, 2014; Gallery Medium, Bratislava, 2013). She is the recipient of the Essl Art Award CEE 2015.

You are kindly invited to the exhibiton opening of Every Man Is A Lonely Island by Maruša Meglič on 10 May, Thursday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana.

The project is supported by: Filc, d.o.o. & Kemoplast, d.o.o.

On display: 10 May 2018 – 30 May 2018

“Group exhibition Bad Choice? / Slaba odločitev? is part of a long-term research project, which will be implemented in the form of presentations, exhibitions, interviews and analyses. The project was established with the aim of detecting the conditions of work of art collectives in the field of art and presenting the problems and challenges they face in their work. Through the presentation of the process of work and the direct testimony in the form of an interview, the visitor will receive an insight into their creative work, how they operate and the reflections of the artists on the collectivity. We invited three tandems to this year’s exhibition. These are Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica, Nika Oblak & Primož Novak and Small but Dangers.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Thanks to: Center for Contemporary Arts SCCA-Ljubljana and Forum Ljubljana for borrowing equipment for the exhibition.

Additional programme: artist talk & guided tour, Friday, 13th April, at 7 pm.

Lenka Đorojević & Matej Stupica is an artistic duo based in Ljubljana, working together since 2012. With their collaborations, they develop a body of works that oscillate between interactive installation ambiences, set designs and experiential environments. As an artistic duo, they have been presenting their work at: National Library of Serbia in Belgrade and International Centre of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana (2012), MoTA – Museum of Transitory Art in Ljubljana (2014), P74 Gallery and Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova in Ljubljana (2015), 8th Triennial of Contemporary Art – U3, Beyond the Globe at the Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, Galerija Jakopič and P74 Gallery in Ljubljana and RU – Residency Unlimited in New York (2016), Venice International Performance Art Week and A plus A Gallery in Venice, U10 Art Space Belgrade (2017). For their work they received OHO Award 2015. / matejstupica.net, djlenka.wordpress.com

Nika Oblak & Primož Novak examine contemporary media and capital driven society as they dissect its visual and linguistic structure. They exhibited worldwide, in venues like the Sharjah Biennial (AE), Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo (JP), Istanbul Biennial (TR), Biennale Cuvee in Linz (AT), Transmediale in Berlin (DE), FILE in Sao Paulo (BR). They received numerous grants and awards, including the CYNETART Award by the Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau in Dresden (DE) and an honorary mention of art critics at the Biennale WRO, Wroclaw (PL). In 2018 they were awarded the White Aphroid Award for artistic achievement by MMC KIBLA, Maribor (SI). / oblak-novak.org

Small but Dangers (Mateja Rojc & Simon Hudolin Salči), born 1977. They began to work together under the common name Small but Dangers in 2004, with exhibition Process in C.M.A.K. Youth Center Cerkno. They are represented by Gallery P74 since 2010. / smallbutdangers.cerkno.net

You are kindly invited to the opening of group exhibition Bad Choice? on 6 April, Friday at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery. Make sure to join us also for the artist talk and guided tour on 13 April, Friday at 7 pm.

On display: 6 April 2018 – 26 April 2018

“Erik Mavrič is qualified painter who does not appear very frequently in the public artistic space, however, when he does, he usually puts on display an ouvre of monument qualities. He proved this already at his first larger solo exhibition at Krško Gallery, where he – under the joint title Who Is Stingy with Words, Lacks Bread… / Kdor besede špara, kruha strada… (2014) – presented a couple of monumental artworks. In the first one, entitled Garbage Bible, he copied the entire text of the Bible, in excerpts, onto the packaging left over from his daily shopping. In the second, entitled Golden Bread / Zlati kruh, he dried and gilded about 400 kilos of bread. Another artwork that belongs within this frame is Erik’s Room / Erikova soba in the Hiša kulture (House Of Culture), in Pivka (2017), a permanent wall painting that came about in the way that the artist covered all the walls of a smaller gallery space entirely with a crayon, as a »seismograph« of visual noting of activities, taking place in this particular space.

What all the mentioned artworks have in common and what connects them with his most recent one, introduced in the present exhibition, is – in its very basis – a simple, yet long-running, monotonous and repetitious routine of its creation. The artist was producing each of these works for several months or even years, several hours a day, using commonplace materials and tools of broad coverage. To sum it up, the artist closely bound his production with his everyday surroundings and ordinary daily life.

In the present exhibition he is presenting a monumental work entitled The Sky On Earth / Nebo na zemlji in which he undertook the task of diagram-transferring of the night sky on newspaper paper with a ball-pen. The image entitled The visible stars by distance, by the Black Oak observatory in California, USA, available on the internet, served as the outset for his artwork The image shows a data model of the universe, visible to the naked eye, representing only a fragment of all the stars that have been detected by telescopes. The image is divided horizontally and vertically into 475 parts. The artist was drawing diagrams of singular segments onto the pages of daily papers, enlarged in the 1:10 ratio. The fragmentariness and the process of enlarging enabled him to transform the copying into a kind of a daily dairy entry, the process that he persistently continued for long 17 months, 7 hours per day, on average. The final product of the process is the approximately 50 square metres (5,073 m x 9,750 m) big puzzle-like drawing, depicting the star-covered sky, spreading out over the written record of topical events on Earth, as well as the artist’s visual diary from the period.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Erik Mavrič (1979, Koper) graduated in painting in 2004 and in 2008 obtained his M.A. at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. His works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, among them at the House of Culture/Hiša kulture, Pivka, 2016; Galerija Dimenzija napredka, Nova Gorica, 2014; Galerija Krško, 2014; Project Room SCCA / Projektna soba SCCA, Ljubljana, 2012. Mavrič had participated at several group exhibitions in such venues as: P74, Ljubljana, Hiša kulture Pivka, Centre for Contemporary Arts/Center sodobnih umetnosti Celje, Galerija Velenje, City Gallery/Mestna galerija Nova Gorica, Galerija Simulaker, Novo mesto, Galerija Insula, Izola. In 2012 he was awarded a special acknowledgement of the expert jury at the 16th Slovene Sculpture Exhibition, and in 2002 he received a Prešeren Award for students.

You are kindly invited to the exhibition opening of The Sky On Earth by Erik Mavrič, curated by Mojca Grmek. The opening will take place on 6 February at 8 pm at Alkatraz Gallery in Ljubljana.

On display: 6 February 2018 – 2 March 2018