Waves in Sculpture

Current theoretical discussions and analyses of contemporary sculpture in Slovenia are often associated with reflections on exhibition installations. And rightfully so, given that exhibitions are events at which sculptures become spatially and visually enacted as demonstrated, above all, by sculpture pieces designed and executed with a certain exhibition space and selected exhibition theme in mind. Exhibition events and authorial principles of installation give rise to new professional questions regarding contemporary sculptural practices. The City Art Gallery Ljubljana (MGML) organizes exhibitions and keeps abreast of creative trends in Slovenian sculpture in both professional and theoretical terms. Over the recent years it has organized the following exhibition presentations of contemporary sculpture: the exhibition "Pot skozi skulpturo" ("Paths through Sculpture") in 2012, the exhibition "Raztezanje kiparskih struktur" (Expanding Sculptural Structures) in 2014, and for 2016 the exhibition "Valovanje v skulpturah "("Waves in Sculpture"). The aforementioned exhibitions have featured twenty-seven accomplished and renowned academic sculptors. 

The selected artists, as the exhibitions themselves, have demonstrated that Slovenian sculpture is a strong, dynamic and highly engaging art form operating with a distinct artistic language that is technically, materially, expressively and motivically clear, attractive as well as visually and narratively legible. Although new accomplishments in sculpture are placed into relationships with exhibition spaces, they mainly serve as material-temporal modulations construing the variability of material and hence form as a tendency towards constant movement or, in our case, a tendency towards creating an image of waving. Waving can denote different relationships between tighten–loosen, shrink–expand, fold–unfold, evolve–devolve, stretch–contract, soften–harden. The organism of sculpture can thus be defined on the basis of its ability to bend its own particles or rather to wave itself into a materially manifested and visually arranged image.

Waves in Sculpture

The group exhibition "Waves in Sculpture" continues the thematic series of exhibitions that analyse contemporary Slovenian sculpture with a selection of some of the most renowned Slovenian academic sculptors of ...