Mladen Stropnik: adijo pastry

He takes us through the experience of various psychological states, from feelings of tension, nonsense, discomfort, the false, the impossible, the threatening, the unspoken, to feelings of lightness, pleasure, ease and joy. Stropnik’s works subtly communicate with the viewer through various visual and mental loops in a minimalist narrative. They not only require a close reading of the many unusual signs, images, words, titles and locations of the works within the space but also the active participation of the viewer. It is often only through movement and interaction with the works that the various, otherwise seemingly dormant situations in the gallery are activated and the most intimate stories are unlocked, which Stropnik conceals from the superficial viewer, but at the same time discloses to the attentive viewer. Stropnik’s works are thus outwardly fragmentary, incomplete and incoherent, but at the same time, their holes and voids are full of precisely the missing parts that need to be used by the viewer to piece together the whole.