Paintings, My Friends
Over twenty-three years ago, four circles appeared on my painting, and they have since become a constant in my work, while everything else has changed over time. The similarity between my paintings is always external (the four circles), but the difference shapes the essence of my art (repetitions). I remain faithful to the eternal within the transient.
From 2002 until today, I have painted 1,547 paintings (my friends) and have come up with 7,425 titles, waiting for paintings to be made for them. All of the paintings include four circles, are small-format and of varying dimensions, and what I paint is difference. During this time, I have also recorded three videos in which I read the titles of the completed paintings.
This time, I will exhibit 14 paintings and 3 videos.
“... It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know. You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” — this is how the dearly loved Samuel Beckett ends his novel The Unnamable I too will go on, I will continue as a painter in the spirit of Duchamp’s Étant donnés. I will paint my friends (paintings), repeat difference, and then title the paintings with names (first and last name, along with year of birth and year of death). Painting is a challenge for me.
Every few years I make a video which I read the titles of the finished paintings, with the titles shown as subtitles in the video. I agree with Marcel Duchamp, who said that the title is an invisible color.
My painting does not imitate, but rather repeats—repeats repetition. The world of my painting (of my spirit) not conditioned solely by looking and empathy, but by the mere possibility of it.
The paintings I didn’t exhibit this time are neither worse nor better, they are simply not exhibited this time.
For the paintings created between 2020 and 2024 (334 of them), I recorded a video in which I read the titles of the paintings in layered voices (similar to inventions by Steve Reich, Scott Johnson). This video is not yet finished. Here too, I intend to repeat difference. For the audio backdrop, I will subtly use sounds I recorded at the Marcel Duchamp exhibition at MMK Museum, Frankfurt am Main in 2022, at other exhibitions, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and elsewhere. Visually, the video will be minimalistic in the style of Félix González-Torres’, 1991/1995.
Milan Golob

[1] Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable.
[2] I record videos using outdated electronic equipment (e.g., Olympus SP 310) in black-and-white. I record the sounds with a mobile phone that's over a decade old (Samsung GT-C3590). I then process and combine everything using the programs Videopad and Audacity.
[3] Painting is a mental thing, said Leonardo da Vinci.

Milan Golob (1963, Ljubljana) graduated in 1987 from the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology (now Faculty of Mathematics and Physics) in Ljubljana. In 1993, he also graduated from the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (now Faculty of Fine Art and Design) in Ljubljana. From the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000, he was the editor of Likovne besede, a visual arts magazine. He exhibits his artwork in both solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. He is the recipient of several recognitions and awards, such as the Prešeren Student Award for Painting (1992), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2003), Henkel Art.Award – Nominee (2005), and a working grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia (2007). His works are included in collections in Slovenia, Italy, Belgium and Austria. He lives in Radenci.

www.golob-gm.si