Erik Mavrič: Shapeless Ideas
Exhibition, intervention, conversation

November 8-16, 2012
SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

In frame of the exhibition the individual conversations with Erik have been offered on prior arrangements.

World of Art has become (unfortunately also) more and more subjected to an imperative of hyper production and orientation towards final ''product''. Consequently, such conditions put a lot of pressure on creative process, which has to be functional, effective, successful and most of all, already based on clear goals. It’s running out of time and money for pondering, searching, testing. Therefore, we will not only step one step back but in totally opposite direction. We want to show work of the artist, development of particular idea, inspiration, process, which runs in the background and lets itself to stray and even end in a dead-end. Or awaits its continuation and stimulates open possibilities. We will also focus on artworks that have been conceptually conceived, yet remained unfeasible because of various reasons or have just not been realised up till now.

Erik will exhibit his precise, often drawn, ideas for realization of a specific artwork or project. Some of them remained unrealised because he has changed his mind during the process, some are unworkable, some have perhaps been already from the beginning conceived as concepts of their own which can still leave open possibilities for further development. Some ideas are finished and concluded. One could discern a common point in their cruelty and insight with which they comment on the society of  today  However, the artist is not only a distant observer, he exposes – sometimes directly and clearly, sometimes ironically and concealed – his own role in the society and the responsibility we all have towards it.

Presentation of his ideas, conceptions and projects will become an intervention in our Project room – only to mention a few – to copy the Declaration of Human Rights on a toilet paper, to equip tins with meat products with sound transmitters, which would play sounds of tinned animals, draft for a painting of an American flag as a market code.

Simona Žvanut

Erik Mavrič was born 1979 in Koper. In 1998 he finished the High School for Design and Photography in Ljubljana, in 2004 he graduated in painting at Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana where he finished master's degree in 2008. In 2002 he received a student Prešeren reward. He participated at several group and solo exhibitions, such as: 16. Slovenska kiparska razstava (Tawn Hall, 2012), Anti Festival of Contemporary Art (Kuopio, Finland, 2008) and Mladi (Insula Gallery, 2003.

[Published November 30, 2012]