P74 Gallery ARCHIVE PAGE

27 August – 16 September 2013
P74 Gallery, Trg Prekomorskih brigad 1, Ljubljana

You are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition by Tobias Putrih at P74 Gallery on Tuesday, 27 August 2013 at 19:00h.

In conjunction with the opening:
Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 18:30 pre-opening discussion with the artist Tobias Putrih

In numerous projects, relational spatial structures and constructions Tobias Putrih creates distortions of perception. The uncertain border between the work of art and its mechanical exhibition reveals a wider duality and doubt. His inquiry into the relations between the interiority and the exteriority of social and cultural spaces absorbs utopian architectural projects, idealistic concepts of art, and projects of experimental movements, all of which he studies, (even) turning them in the end against themselves, into their opposite.

In his creations, Putrih travels between different visual media: from film, photography, and drawings to sculpture, spatial installations, and settings. He often exhibits plans, models, and sketches, that is, representational forms which describe the structures and prescribed functions of objects or architecture. For him, these models are stand-alone works. They interest him as forms through which he can research potential ideas. They are most often unrealised propositions which have emerged on the thin line between fact and fiction, between temporary and permanent. With the use of ephemeral materials, such as glue, egg cartons, hay and Styrofoam he creates smaller modular structures as well as larger spatial installations and “environments”.

Putrih is interested in how architecture, design, and science influence the system of social structures. In his creative process he regularly looks for historical references from previous decades, especially from the utopian models of modernism, such as those in the works of Buckminster Fuller, Robert Smith, Vjenceslav Richter, Otto Frei, the group of Japanese architects and urbanists Metabolist, etc. He’s creates an open dialogue with utopian moments in modern engineering and design.

The current project which Tobias Putrih is preparing for P74 Gallery carries the title An Ode to the Egg. It stems from photograms which were created several years ago and from which Putrih developed a short film. In addition to the projection of the film and the photograms, he will exhibit geometric ceramic sculptures. With his latest projects Putrih is all the more directed towards investigating the relationship between an object and its film image, that is, the projection of the object. He’s curious about the shift and the tension which are created in that relationship. In the case of An Ode to the Egg he is searching for abstract images resulting from a concrete object.

Tobias Putrih was born in 1972 in Kranj, Slovenia. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Ljubljana and studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany. He currently lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). Putrih belongs among the most established contemporary Slovene visual artists. He has participated in a number of exhibitions at home and abroad, among them, Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt (2002), the exhibition Greater New York at the 52nd Venice Biennale, where he represented Slovenia (2007), the exhibition Promises of the Past at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris (2010) and at the 29th São Paolo Biennial. For his work, Tobias Putrih has also received numerous awards, among them, the Prešeren Foundation Award (2009) and the Župančič Award (2012).

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The exhibition is sponzored by: Cockta

The programme of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and by the Municipality of Ljubljana, Department for Culture.