RASTISLAV PODOBA & JERNEJ FORBICI / THE OBSERVER´S DIARY
RASTISLAV PODOBA & JERNEJ FORBICI / THE OBSERVER´S DIARY
Their art circulates around the theme of space, be it in the form of a real landscape or just an impression of a fictive space. First exploring the problem in depth the artists then continue and work in the medium of photography. Their aim is not to use it for the final composition but rather to keep it as a special diary.
Rastislav Podoba (* 1975) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (in the studio of Prof. V.Popovič and Prof. R.Sikora). He has been a finalist of VUB Painting Award for several times and has been awarded Martin Benka Prize. In 2008 the artist was awarded The Prize of The International Association of Art – Europe at the 6th International Biennial of Drawing Pilsen. His paintings have a dream-like visuality on the border of abstract and figurative concerning with the issues of space and landscape. His work has a close affinity with the work of a photographer who tries various screens and a shutter taking and developing a picture. Like in a darkroom, where the contours of a shot suddenly appear, Podoba´s paintings evolve with layering, bringing or taking away the texture, with brushmarks or dripping the colour. As the author puts it, the most exciting moment comes when he starts to feel there is an image coming. It is the moment of both, openness and secrecy, which is key to his work. Podoba´s paintings, horizons or panoramas come as the result of a composition and a certain movement brought to a painting. It is an intuition that is decisive for him together with “a conscious grasping of the moment in which the state of things in painting takes its existence, given to it by a kind of a miracle, upon itself”. From an abstract surface there suddenly emerges a rising smoke, tornado or a tree-top without ever loosing its character of an autonomous colourful stain or a structure. Podoba´s art has the dimension of experimenting within painting techniques and a mimetic representation but it also researches and confronts the question of a perception and a relationship between an image and its representation.
Jernej Forbici (* 1980) lives in a Slovenian town Ptuj. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Art in Venice where he specialized in a landscape painting. His work has been presented in countries such as Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, this is the first time he exhibits in Slovakia. Many of his paintings show a Slovenian landscape, a region called Halda that is highly polluted due to a bauxite mining. For the several years now Jernej Forbici has been documenting with his camera this irresponsible industrial expansion and the impact it has on a local environment. Paintings of various sizes have one thing in common – they show destruction and an explosion of a wild nature. By focusing on a detail and an accurate depiction, Forbici´s work engages with a classical Venetian landscape painting. However, he brings to it a gestural style and a highly textured surface. The result is somehow “polluted” image: an intervention into the surface of a painting symbolically refers to the danger of an ecological catastrophe. The exhibition will show his latest works from the period of 2007 – 2010 and a space installation that is an important part of his most recent work.
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