Vesna Bukovec
Clarity is everything right now
Exhibition

14–28 October, 2010
KAPSULA, Ajdovščina 1, Ljubljana
Opening view: Thursday, 14 October, 2010 at 9 pm

SCCA-Ljubljana web-master, Vesna Bukovec has a solo exhibition in KAPSULA, Ljubljana.

Vesna Bukovec, from the series of drawings Their True Nature, 2010

The soft, unbroken line of the drawings in the series Their True Nature, by Vesna Bukovec, complements the texts and heightens the tension in the meaning of the words and the lines of the letters. The drawings are restrained and quiet, but in a certain way also very precise and demanding, for they require a special attitude of the viewer. But the drawings are not directly connected with the meaning of the texts in any way we usually expect, namely, that the picture illustrates the writing or that the writing explains the picture. The texts use the third person singular instead of the second-person direct address customary in horoscopes. As a result, we find ourselves in an ambivalent position: on the one hand, we are looking at drawings that are not signs from the zodiac, and on the other, at texts, and are unable to come fully to terms with either. We want the texts to describe the drawings even though we realize that the drawings do not illustrate them. These works’ humorous, even absurd, character, which reminds us of fables, pulls us into a spiral of meanings that volley back and forth from picture to text, and the resulting vortex causes a change in our viewpoint because of the moral that is absent.

Vesna Bukovec, Personal Advice, 2010, video still

The drawings are accompanied by the minute-long video Personal Advice, which presents the text of Bukovec’s horoscope in English. The text has been translated from English into Slovene and back again by the Google Translate program and is also read out loud by computer software. Although it distances itself in this way from the original, it nevertheless preserves some of the characteristic features of personality tests and motivational methodologies.

Excerpt from the text by Jernej Kožar

More:

• www.kapsula.si
• www.vesna-bukovec.net/eng/archives/935

KAPSULA
Ajdovščina 1, Ljubljana
www.kapsula.si
Opening hours: Monday-Friday, 11 am – 3 pm

Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. / P74 Center and Gallery
Prušnikova 74, Ljubljana
e-mail: p74info@volja.net
www.zavod-parasite.si

Program of Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. is supported by City of Ljubljana and Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia.

Vesna Bukovec (1977) graduated and completed her post-graduate studies in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She works as a solo artist as well as in the art group KOLEKTIVA (with Metka Zupanič and Lada Cerar). In recent years she has presented her works at numerous solo and group exhibitions in Ljubljana, Maribor, Slovenj Gradec, Novo Mesto, Ribnica, Zagreb, Belgrade, Athens, Berlin, Beijing, Linz, Graz, Vienna, New York, Verona... Her artistic work finds its expression in a variety of media (video, photography, drawing, installation) and approaches (research, appropriation, participation, etc.), with irony being a frequently used artistic strategy.

[Published October 12, 2010]