Ljubljana
MGML
Stephen J Shanabrook, Veronika Georgieva: The Traveling Idiot
© 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.


Stephen J Shanabrook, Veronika Georgieva: The Traveling Idiot

13. 9. 2011–16. 10. 2011

The Traveling Idiot does not want to make choices; he prefers to make gestures while wandering around in his car. He is neither a winner nor a loser; he refuses to make the distinction, and expects fate to mould him. His journey is chaotic, and yet it leaves behind seemingly useless, but funny traces of a personal destiny.

The Traveling Idiot show is a collection of those traces. Orchestrated as a road movie, The Traveling Idiot is devoted to moments of emotional gesture, sought-after "mistakes". The morning, with its regrets and cleaning up has not arrived yet. It is still the time of the choice-free, guilt-free ride.

Spin City, an eight-minute video made with a camera mounted on the wheel of a car. The audience sees the streets of the South Bronx in summer from a tyre's point of view. When the car moves slowly, the narrative is linear and recognisable, but as the car gains speed, the narrative becomes an abstract kaleidoscope of colours and forms. This traveler just seems to wander around, "lost", remaining on the periphery of things and being happy about it. "Why be humbly melancholic about the centre? Isn't the centre, this absence of game and diversity, just a different name for death?" says Derrida.

In his book Ways to Paradise, Peter Cornel compares two classic texts based on pilgrimage – by Chateaubriand and Gerard de Nerval. Chateaubriand's journey is linear, because his Catholic faith has no doubts. He knows the "Centre", and goes directly to the main pilgrimage locations: Rome, Athens and Jerusalem. Meanwhile, de Nerval travels on the periphery of those centres. His East "is an uncertain magnetic field, without a centre or end-point". Chateaubriand is more of a tourist, while Nerval is a traveler. Our Traveling Idiot goes further; he does not merely ignore the Centre and directions; basically, he kills them.

In a new series called Get Directions, the artists had blank road signs made for them by the N.Y.C. Department of Transportation. These blank signs are used as canvases on which traveler’s gestures are recorded; they lead you nowhere with the intention of taking you somewhere.

Chocolate Road I’m Leaving Behind is a wide strap of chocolate painted along the floor and up the walls. The artists take a real car tyre and make marks all over the gallery floor and walls, like road lanes run over while still wet, leaving marks, demolishing rules.


As the son of an obstetrician and town coroner, Stephen J Shanabrook spent his youth working in a chocolate factory and building robots in the basement of his house in rural Ohio. Now living in New York, Shanabrook has exhibited throughout the world in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Drawing Center and the Swiss Institute in New York, and the Moscow Biennale. He has received numerous American and European grants, as well as public commissions. His works are included in public and private collections in the USA, Europe, Russia and Australia, as well as in Damien Hirst’s ‘murderme’ collection and David Walsh’s controversial MONA museum.

Veronika Georgieva grew up in Moscow, was an exemplary young Soviet pioneer, and later took a degree in architecture. Working in collaboration since 2010, Shanabrook and Georgieva devised an advertising campaign for the Comme des Garçons fashion house. The artists collaborated with the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency to create the advertising campaign for the 25th anniversary of Reporters without Borders. The project was shortlisted for a Lion Award at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Their work is a unique vision of surreal beauty formed on the threshold of entropy and disaster. The artists give a new and often disturbing meaning to substances and forms otherwise associated with comfort, happiness and banality – chocolate, plastic toys, candies.

Colophon

Production: Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana
Artists: Stephen J Shanabrook, Veronika Georgieva
This project has been made possible by: 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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