Opens Doors to Young Artists
About exhibition
Parkplatz
An exhibition by painting students of the University of Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design
Exhibitions are the basic value units of contemporary art. Most of us that engage in art present our successes in long lists of exhibitions staged. Within these, there is a clear hierarchy that we, insiders, know well: some venues are better than others, some curators rank higher than their colleagues, a solo exhibition is worth more than a group one, and so on. It is these types of lists and combinations of these and similar parameters that show our professional capital through concise indicators. We therefore must and want to exhibit our works because exhibitions are our main currency in the social and economic system of contemporary art. An exhibition is supposed to present a clear view of our work, legitimise and contextualise it, and remain recorded as a permanent credit or reference in our professional journey.
At the same time, we know that art can only happen as a disruption to these types of linear processes. We thus need to constantly interfere with these – not in order to destroy them, but to allow art to speak up through the deviations, gaps, blunders and errors created. To allow art to happen it is sometimes necessary – well, more often than just sometimes – not to present ourselves in the best light. Our art may well be at its best when we are not doing things right. Therefore, the Parkplatz exhibition, which showcases the works of young painters at UL ALUO, a priori denounces any representativeness and exemplary insights into the production of the new generation of Slovenian painters.
Instead it provides room for art, offering up the corporeality and thickness of painting as a medium, an affirmative attitude toward playfulness and a supposedly unreasonable investment, which, at least for a second, impedes the normalisation of art within the art system. Parkplatz proceeds directly from the challenge of a student exhibition's production, its economy of expectations and limited resources, and the specific context of mentorship and its ambivalences. The exhibition invests all these elements with a playful irony, with which it interferes with the linearity of the dictated entry into the art system, bringing the exhibition-making process back into the register of liberating irresponsibility. Parkplatz is not about grand gestures or revolutionary statements, because these are among the prefabricated forms we try to avoid. It is about grand affirmations that proceed from the pleasure of unmet expectations, about banalities that sharpen our views, and about the freedom of realising that an unreasonable investment is the only right investment in art.
Participating artists:
Ana Božič, BRAVO, Samra Buljić, Maša Črešnik, Kristina Ćuso, Mihael Fajt, Jurij Hartman, Klara Kracina, Lana Kosovel, Lenča Malec, Bojan Pejović, Manja Pivk, Ajda Podgorelec, Valentin Radulović, Sara Skenderija, Janez Škrlec, Neža Urbiha
Mentors: prof. Ksenija Čerče and prof. Žiga Kariž
Production: University of Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design
MGBS kurator: Vladimir Vidmar
