Invitation to attend the opening of the exhibition

Curated by: dr. Sarival Sosič

A continuity uncharacteristic for the Slovenian creative space permeates the twenty-five years of academically trained sculptress Rene Rusjan's career. The artist first explored the formal motifs and thematic elements within matter as such and the various ways in which it responds to the author's perceptions and treatments. During the 80's and early 90's, her attention was devoted to the research of sculpture as matter that develops in space, but gains expressive power through its active relationship with materiality. As a social factor that completely changed many lives and the worldview, the war in Yugoslavia during the mid-90's prompted the most significant change in her art. What came about in those years was a renewed necessity for reflection on the standing social situation, a breath of fresh existential air shaking and blowing around. A sort of personal characterization begins directing the artist's creative energies towards an activity marked by the research of existential meaning and the position of the modern subject (the artist herself) as based on real life experiences. Rene Rusjan started to actively include everyday life into her artistic endeavours and gradually developed the autonomousness of artefacts, elements and objects often taken from our mundane, material everyday existence.

The artist began her creative career in the late 80's as part of the then so-called “Young Slovenian Sculpture”. Initially, she progressed from her early work to sculpture that, while still modernist in essence, emphasized the study of actual matter and form. What followed next was a shift away from sculpture as a materially conditioned form and an interest in multimedia artistic expression, with an emphasis on the various forms of direct and indirect communication between people facilitated by the new media, such as video, the internet, photography, sound, as well as the use of the written or spoken word. Not making actual sculptures anymore, but directly constructing the forms of new life, new possibilities of communication and bonding steered the artist away from traditional gallery-space exhibition. She began thinking and showing her work in informal, sometimes even unconventional spaces. This exhibition, O čem govorim, ko govorim o... (What I talk about when I talk about...) in the City Art Gallery of Ljubljana is without doubt the most extensive and most complex display of Rene Rusjan's creations and work to this day. It reveals the fundamentals of her poetics, which are, predominantly, raising awareness by means of real, direct activity. Transforming her art into a personal culture, what we might, perhaps, call art as a form of self-giving, or an act that manifests within the creative process as an ongoing event that spans the years, a process, authorial meditation perpetually in the making.

More informations: http://www.mgml.si/mestna-galerija-ljubljana/prihodnje-razstave-412/rene-rusjan-o-cem-govorim-ko-govorim-o/

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Andreja Leban
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E: andreja.leban@ung.si