Miha Štrukelj: 1415 squares, approximately
20 September – 11 October 2013
P74 Gallery, Trg Prekomorskih brigad 1, Ljubljana
You are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition by Miha Štrukelj at P74 Gallery on Friday, 20 September 2013 at 19:00h.
Announcing in conjunction with the opening:
Friday, 20 September 2013, please join us for a pre-opening talk with Miha Štrukelj at 18:30h.
In his work Miha Štrukelj makes use of the medium of painting and the medium of drawing in order to investigate the medium itself, as well as the process of creating. With the processual approach he gives the viewer insight into all the phases of creating an artistic work.
The world of motifs, which Štrukelj masters in his paintings, was initially drawn from the world of media and the Internet, later he focused upon urban landscapes, where he successfully combined real and fictional elements or simply abstracted real topologies. Urban spaces are defined by architecture, locations and objects that create tension: empty, forgotten, uninhabited spaces that act as something intermediate, undecided.
Over the years, Štrukelj has developed his own method of working. While creating a painting or a drawing he leaves empty fields, from there they lead the way to an “extended painting” and “extended drawing”, when the painting and the drawing leave their carrier surface and extend into the physical space. The process of work begins with the selection of motifs from a photo or from the actual environment which houses an anonymous individual. The basis of the work is a grid, which brings a formal order to a newly-arisen chaos of disparate elements. The grid is also an element of the artistic tradition of painting. In the installation the grid traverses between the real and the imaginary spaces, thus enabling the painting to reveal different layers of its representation.
In Gallery P74 Miha Štrukelj announces the presentation of four paintings, created in the last three years. Three of the works are based on a research of the architecture of the city of Ljubljana, focusing on the current housing trends and the changing social and physical appearance of the city. The last, larger work, a triptych, was created according to the principle of collage of urban spaces which is characteristic for his site-specific installlations.
Miha Štukelj (b. 1973) completed both his undergraduate and graduate studies in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. He lives and works in Ljubljana. For his works he has received numerous awards and scholarships, among them: the Henkel Drawing Award (2008) and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2008-2009). He has participated in several international artist residencies, including in New York and Dublin. In 2002 his work was presented in the publication Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting. He has participated in many solo and group exhibitions around the world, including in New York, Paris, Beijing, Madrid, Vienna, Bologna, Bonn, Venice, Torino, Riga, Basel, Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, Bratislava, Sarajevo, Zagreb, etc. In 2009 he successfully represented Slovenia in the 53rd Venice Biennale.
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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.