Marija Mojca Pungerčar, Mortality Table (2009–2013); Petra Varl, The Book of Serigraphs (2011), Pri Zlatem Stegnu Art Project, Installation (2013), installation view of the accompanying exhibition Impressions +386 at Calcografia Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.
Photo: Hablar en Arte.
The 30th jubilee edition of the Biennial of Graphic Arts presented Slovenia’s artists also outside the country’s borders. The exhibition, which was envisaged by curator Breda Škrjanec for the Calcografío Nacional in Madrid, was based on the conceptual framework of the expanded notion of the printmaking medium. This provided a dynamic overview of art produced by the middle generation of contemporary Slovenian artists. The artworks in the exhibition shared a freshness and effortlessness in their selection of medium and current involvement in the universal, individual as well as social situations and dilemmas, touching upon the identity and intimacy of the artist on the one hand, and ecology, social inequality and the dictatorship of the media, on the other. This is why the exhibition easily established a dialogue with any curious viewer.
The Impressions +386 exhibition was the fruit of the longstanding cooperation between the International Centre of Graphic Arts, the Hablar en Arte organisation, and the Calcografia Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. With their representative works, established contemporary Slovenian artists presented the latest Slovenian production in the field of printmaking, print and art publications, firmly defending their artistic positions and explorations in the graphic medium. The need to redefine printmaking and other reproducible arts kept the debate alive on the new processes for generating images that coexist with those more traditional, expanding the boundaries of the graphic arts. Although the power of tradition could sometimes still be discerned in the exploration of formal visual elements, the subject matter was mostly concerned with making a commentary on personal experience through universal images translated into visual language. The principles of the creative process were therefore similar, the contents, however, differed substantially, given the fact that they embodied the original voice of each individual artist.
Artists: Vesna Drnovšek, Svetlana Jakimovska Rodić, Tanja Lazetić, Marija Mojca Pungerčar, Sašo Sedlaček, Tomaž Tomažin, as well as two artist groups, Pri Zlatem stegnu (The Golden Thigh – Katja Skušek, Nataša Skušek, Mladen Stropnik) and Stripburger.
Curator: Breda Škrjanec.