Mountain and sea zines / Gorski in morski zini
Mahlerca Gallery
28. 6.–13. 8. 2019
Gallery SKC Rijeka, Croatia
3. 9.–15. 9. 2019
Collage in zines
Aleksandra Sikora (PL), Ana Vodušek (SI), Anita Kos (HR), Barbara Jedraszko (PL), Brina Meze Petrič SI), Carlo F. Pietrasanta (IT), Kosmo Nauty (CZ), Marta Janik (PL), Mateja Rusak (HR), slakko (SI), Sunčana Brkulj (HR), Tatjana Kotnik (SI), Tinka Volarič (SI)
Kuratorja / Curated by: Urška Alič (SI), Bruno Butorac (HR)
We rarely really think about what a day spent at the seaside or in the mountains means to us. Until it rains outside or the cold bites and we have to spend most of our time indoors: then we realise how connected we are with nature, the feeling of belonging, of being welcome and free that we get in these two environments.
Hues of blue and gray, that was my first thought when I was expecting the works to arrive from our public call for art publications, so-called zines, dedicated to the theme of sea and mountains. But my mouth was open wide when I saw the first artworks.
I could have known: collage has always been full of personal expression. It might be that sometimes it is more difficult to compose a picture because a certain amount of inventiveness and patience is necessary to find the right image. Then one gives a new meaning to individual images as one separates them from the initial context – to found figures of imagination one adds a decorative background, a line, an equation, a lace … and one creates a new work of art.
Innovative approaches are characteristic for zines: digital puzzles and analogue details, additions, various printing techniques. Historical mythological figures, drawings from manuals, personal photographs, black and white images and landscape details, structures; conceptually planned stories and some postcards, explorations. It seems that collage art is experiencing a vibrant renaissance or that it actually never really lost its expressive power. It the same time, it is a sort of a universal language: the works we received travelled here from our wider region, but it still seems that they could have been made right here. Or anywhere else.
Urška Alič