Ljubljana
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Critical reviews of Jiři Bezlaj’s exhibition Stone in City Art Gallery Ljubljana

"Marking the seventieth anniversary of the sculptor Jiři Bezlaj (1949), the City Art Gallery set up a survey exhibition presenting one of the most eminent Slovenian stone sculptors. Having worked in stone for more than forty years, Bezlaj has a track record of over 120 solo and group exhibitions organized both in Slovenia and internationally.”

Jiři Bezlaj, Stone, City Art Gallery Ljubljana, 2019
Jiři Bezlaj, Stone, City Art Gallery Ljubljana, 2019 © Andrej Peunik/MGML

"The survey exhibition presents clusters of Bezlaj’s sculptures ranging from erotic interlacing between the female body and modernist abstract figures to Pedestals for Stone, Fragments, Cyclops’ heads and feet from the 1990s, and outstanding statues from the cluster on Sacrifice. The second-floor features sculptures from the new millennium on the themes of Summer, Nothing is Like Insects, and lastly, the Afternoon of a Faun. Apart from Sacrifice and A Woman Curled up into a Ball, Bezlaj’s creative path is most distinctly underlined by They Walked Before Us – Cyclops’ feet highly effectively placed in black sand and gravel.

"It is precisely due to such installations, as well as through the appealing touches of various rocks that the exhibition comes across as extremely effective and communicative. As such, it speaks to us about eternal themes of eroticism and sacrifice, as well as ancient Greek stories that repeat themselves first time as history and second time as farce. Nonetheless, its greatest merit lies in Bezlaj’s acting as a mediator of what crucially defines us as human beings: surrender, observation, and memory."

Source: Dnevnik

Posted: 9. 1. 2020

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