Ljubljana
MGML
Proximity Effect
© Matevž Paternoster/MGML

Match Gallery

Trg francoske revolucije 7
1000 Ljubljana

T +386 1 24 12 590
T +386 1 24 12 500
E galerija.vzigalica@mgml.si


Tuesday–Sunday: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Monday: Closed
1 January, 1 November, 25 December: Closed
24 and 31 December: 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

Free entry.


Proximity Effect

15. 3. 2016–8. 5. 2016

Within the context of DIVA Station, an archive of video and new media art, SCCA-Ljubljana is continuously preparing exhibitions with specific themes involving in-depth research. In 2016, the current exhibition questions the meaning of space in chosen video works.

The 1990s were considered a season of optimism, when a better future was supposed to be showing on the horizon of independence. Today, we are looking at this period through a different lens. In the light of global prospects, it seems necessary to rethink what was "actually" going on at the time. A careful look back shows that the transitional optimism was not as monolithic after all. It was only that the imaginary success story was louder. Indeed, architecture was constructing a new world boldly, but in art we can trace persisting doubts. In creating their own story, artists were showing a different image of the milieu. To put it another way, they were trying to uncover the cracks of what in the vigour of the times was rather overlooked or withheld.

Considering the fact that the curated selection was based on observations of the use of space and architecture in videos, the exhibition concept is exploring the question of how to provide the chosen videos with an adequate setting that would at the same time address their contents. As a result, the exhibition takes the visitor on a tour of six different spatial installations beginning with spatial screenings (Discipline, Vertigo Bird), to be followed by installations placing the video in a relationship with the spatial object, and thereby with the human body (Path of Crazy Wisdom, The Park of Culture, Construct, Quick/Slow).

The video-image took hold of the image that conquered middle-class living rooms, manipulating, disintegrating and distorting it, placing its component parts into new causal situations defying the set gaze. With its introductory screenings, the exhibition animates the visitors from head to toe and further invites them to the objects displaying videos associated with closeness, isolation, apartness. This, after all, is revealed in the contents of the works exploring the recent past between 1989 and 2004.

What the videos communicate also uncovers an attitude towards the background, architecture, space. A series of questions is raised: In what way is architecture addressed, negated, emphasised in the contents of these works? What is its importance within the video in contrast to its everyday set image? What is the relation of the video towards the image of the space, and particularly, what meaning, if any, has been created through the manipulation of the context in which it was made?

Living in the era in which our imagination of space has been acquiring new dimensions through gravitational waves, yet when our ability to act seems to be marking time within our status quo, the divide between the love of science and the reality of disturbing events has been growing wider. What we are living in, in constant disintegration on our way to isolation, might be the past of a technologically dependent future. This selection of video works is just a segment in the story that repeats itself perpetually.

—Nika Grabar


Works at the exhibition 
Neven Korda/Borghesia: Discipline, 03:46, 1989
Miha Vipotnik: Path of Crazy Wisdom, 09:58, 1993
Sašo Podgoršek, Iztok Kovač: Vertigo Bird, 33:57, 1996
Marko Peljhan: The Park of Culture, 07:30, 1996
Nataša Prosenc Stearns: Construct, 12:00, 2003
Zemira Alajbegović: Quick/Slow, 11:47, 2004

Colophon

Production: SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts - Ljubljana
Curator: Nika Grabar
Coordination: Dušan Dovč, Luka Polutnik
Exhibition design: Nika Grabar
Production of video objects: Sandi Žgajnar – Vimo, d. o. o.
Web support: Vesna Bukovec
The exhibition was made possible by: Lestra d. o. o. / Center projekcije, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, Kooperativa – Regional Platform for Culture, City of Ljubljana

Match Gallery

Trg francoske revolucije 7
1000 Ljubljana

T +386 1 24 12 590
T +386 1 24 12 500
E galerija.vzigalica@mgml.si


Tuesday–Sunday: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Monday: Closed
1 January, 1 November, 25 December: Closed
24 and 31 December: 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

Free entry.


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