Jože Barši: SPEECHES, PAMPHLETS (COMMENTS, reflections …)
15 December 2017 – 3 January 2018
P74 Gallery, Trg Prekomorskih brigad 1, Ljubljana
You are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition “SPEECHES, PAMPHLETS (COMMENTS, reflections …)” by Jože Barši on Friday, 15 December 2017 at 19.00 at the P74 Gallery in Ljubljana.
When Jože Barši presented the work There are many answers to the question why to grow vegetables … at the Venice Biennale in 1997, he unleashed a tempest in a glass of water. The criticism was outraged, the local audience offended, since it understood the installation of a vegetable garden in the Church of Ateneo di San Basso as a nod toward its own (national) agricultural origin. Those who know the artistic practice of Jože Barši understand that his work in Venice was an example of the successful synthesis of several years of work and an important step forward. Here, he created his first complex spatial installation, a type of laboratory of existence of someone who neither knows nor knows how, someone who is driven towards Beckettian experimentation, even failure, someone who cultivates (a garden) and invites the public into a dialogue and a break from the hellish everyday tourist tempo.
This event of the second half of the 1990s is an instructive example of the broken down encounter between the local environment and contemporary artistic practices that developed in postmodernism. The art of the 1990s put into force a radically different attitude between the artistic object, the artist and the public than there had previously been. Priority was given to the situation, interaction and cooperation which had direct implications in real life. Barši strayed from the sculptural object into a spatial installation, into the medium of sound, performativity, reading, always reminding us that the choice of the medium is a secondary decision that follows the demands of the content. His work opposes the prevailing romantic idea of the expressive and self-satisfied artist and stems from the critical reflection of the simple processes and material around us. Vital is the emphasis on the attention, recognition and reconceptualisation of those perceptions.
In his newer works, Jože Barši uses language and various philosophical texts as his material. We follow the copying of chapters of selected theoretical texts, books, sentences, notes alongside texts, the directing of the attention towards the meaning, dialogue, etc. As he himself says, he is interested in the density of forgotten or unread texts that are often mentioned or quoted, but remain misunderstood and unconsidered. He denotes them with a colored pencil or markers and in them sees the beginning of drawing in the classical sense. By observing and marking he brings the feeling of renewed learning and reading, as if he were to give new meaning to his own practice. Belonging to this framework are also his newer works, a selection of texts from the philosopher Henri Bergson, which for the understanding of reality expose the arguments of indirect experience, and even one’s own intuition, with which it should be the only possible to seize the phenomenon of duration.
Jože Barši passionately carries out the role of art pedagogy as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. In his pedagogical practice he does not give students tasks or problems for which he would expect answers. He encourages them to pose the questions themselves. The problems themselves are not treated as a given. He wishes to present the world to students through the dualistic representations about the thinking subjects and the non-thinking objects. Closer to him is the idea that a human is only matter among other matter, complicated in interpersonal interactions and encounters. Contemporary art is not directly given to us, to understand it requires mental effort and engagement.
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Jože Barši (b. 1955) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Construction under professor Edvard Ravnikar and from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana (UL ALUO), where he also made a specialisation. Since 1988 he teaches in the Department of Sculpture, UL ALUO, from 2006 he is a professor. From 1997 he represented Slovenia at the Venice Biennale, in 1995 he was at the 4th international Istanbul Biennale. He is the recipient of the Golden Bird Award in the field of Visual Arts (2010) and the Rihard Jakopič Award for Fine Arts (2014). He has participated in numerous international residencies and conferences, among other places, in Linz (2008), Belfast (FlaxArt Studios, Northern Ireland, two-month residency, lecture, 2008) and Berlin (2009). He has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, among them, Jože Barši, Retrospective, MSUM, Ljubljana (2013); Jože Barši. 5 Comments, KAPSULA, Ljubljana (2010); How to Think Partisan Art?, Mala galerija, Ljubljana (together with Lidija Radojevič, Tanja Velagič, Miklavž Komelj) (2009); Jože Barši. Close Reading, Gregor Podnar Gallery, Ljubljana (2007); The Grammar of Freedom. Arteast 2000+, Museum of Contemporary Arts Garage, Moscow (2015); 1:1 Stopover, MSUM, Ljubljana (2014); 54th October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia (2013); The Present and Presence | Repetition 1 and 2, MSUM, Ljubljana (2012); 20th Century. Continuities and Ruptures, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (2011); U3. 6th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia, An Idea for Living. Realism and Reality in Contemporary Art in Slovenia, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (2011); Forbidden Death, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje (2009); Museum in the Street, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (2008).