Ancient Kranj stands on a high conglomerate pier, between the Sava valley and the Kokre gorge. Like a mighty defensive wall, the rock wall has protected and preserved many generations of Kranj inhabitants throughout history. The same rock, with trenches, became a safe haven even against bombardment, when modern military doctrine threatened the city with attacks not only from the bottom up, but also from the top down. At a time when bombs are falling again on the edge of Europe, it is necessary to think thoroughly, i.e. down to the very foundations and bare rock, how to stop the violence and re-establish the settlement?
Are tunnels really raw or is raw only human use, which turns even something as noble and vital for survival as natural resources into raw materials? Even today, the Kranj tunnels can be a shortcut between the industrial pool on the Sava river and the natural gorge on the Kokra side, between a heavily urbanized structure and barely touched nature, with a city in between. The Kranj rock was not only used by the old masters for the defense and foundation of the city, they also built the famous Gothic sanctuary from the same conglomerate on which the church stands. They did not dream in vain, they dreamed into substance, so that through and through the sanctuary they created, the world can be sought again and again...
What the world is like, not just the light at the end of the tunnel and how this world enables new growth, we will ask at the underGROWTH exhibition...
S/he who comes out of the shadows can see the light.
What the shadow shows is not real like what the sun shows. Those parts of the brightness of the world that the sun shows us sparkle in the shadows. The world above the surface is ruled by brightness. What is born beneath the surface? We move between the complexity of our own perception and the lack of legibility for the unseen. Each complex of thought, which goes beyond the purely visual, carries its own envelope, and with each envelope we establish a connection between being inside us and being outside, around us. We build an undergrowth from the inside out, a branching space of surprise that stopped somewhere between inhalation and exhalation. What does a person's residual intelligence and emotionality look like? The undergrowth of branching threads of everything that is extracted from us when the perception of the world above the surface changes for a moment, for a breath. When time and observation, outside and inside, carves its line, a cavity that unravels outwards with a thread; where really, no one knows.
Nika Batista is a visual artist who moves between the visualization of immateriality and the abstraction of tangibility. With her work, Undertone of Touch, she stops somewhere between the inhale and the exhale. Space in it becomes temporal and time becomes spacious.
In the underground, Mateja Golež follows the rhythm of natural (conglomerate) and artificial (concrete) stone, where, in contact with the rock, she comes closest to the process of its formation.
Lovro Ivančić places intelligent civilization’s last message in the underworld, which, in the alternate reality, relates with nature instead of technology.
Coming from her original profession, Marija Jenko recognized the tunnels as underground architecture, and the rough concrete rooms along the tunnels as sacred archetypes.
Maruša Kranjc explores the relationship between aesthetics and functionality. In her work, she wishes to capture the balance between light and darkness, between stone and textile, rawness and warmth.
Franci Krevh, Matevž Bajde and sculptor Alenka Vidrgar return the sound of stone back to its origin – to the underground.
Alenka More explores raw perfections of bodies. To design clothes is to experience being dressed, to experience the relationship between the body and clothing from a psychological and sociological point of view.
Ula Pogorevčnik deals with being cramped in the space, with what happens below the surface, under the skin, where everything is hidden. The cave salamander is a parable of a human, or perhaps a human is a parable of the cave salamander.
Darja Rant is a textile designer, passionate about techniques that enable the seamless creation of three-dimensional products. The eggs of proteus salamanders, like beads with a transparent and fragile shell, float in space and act like pearls in the cold and harsh environment.
Janko Rožič is an architect, urban planner, and essayist. Through theoretical and practical work based on spatial principles and linguistic patterns, he connects his own creativity with the oldest wisdom of placement in space and with the most modern artistic, scientific, and philosophical insights.
The project is being created as part of the Textile Art Biennial BIEN 2023. The exhibition will be on view in the Tunnels Under the Old Kranj between May 31 and August 10.
The project is supported and made possible by the Tourist and Culture Board Kranj.
Photo: Maša Pirc / BIEN 2023
Partners: Zavod za gradbeništvo Slovenije (dr. Mateja Golež), Zavod za turizem in kulturo Kranj (ZTKK)
Thanks to: Kristina Bogataj ZTKK, Jamski laboratorij Tular Kranj, Inplet d. o. o. in Velana Living d. o. o.
