In her work, academic painter Blažka Križan intervenes in the material and the surface themselves, with the cut paper facilitating her conniving with the space and the viewer’s gaze.
The delicate voids offer up a game of light and shadows, bringing to mind the translucence of a membrane or insect bite marks on plant leafs, depending on the transparency of the paper. Through random pattern repetition, they form an organic or completely abstract story, which the viewer uncovers by slowly moving his or her gaze across the surface.
The seemingly flickering shapes tease the eye, with the light creating a shadow that doubles the artwork on the second surface. Together, the positive and the negative make up the final effect of the artwork, which is unique due to the external factors and that much more integrated in the relation with the viewer and the environment. The surface of the artwork repeatedly pushes the viewer’s gaze towards experiencing the piece as a whole, as well as towards lingering on each individual cut in the surface.
Blažka Križan (1990) got her M.A. in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO) in Ljubljana in 2017. That same year, she participated in two group exhibitions in the ALUO: prehod študentov slikarstva ALUO students’ exhibition series at the Equrna Gallery. In 2016, her solo exhibition Paper Cutouts was featured at the Layer House gallery in Kranj, and she also participated in the ALUO LXX. Past, Present, Future exhibition at the Jakopič Gallery. Together with Lea Culetto and Nika Vučko, she held the Into Space, Objects exhibition at the Bežigrad Gallery 1.
The Solo Exhibition Cycle is a series of exhibition projects in the upper lobby of Kino Šiška, prepared each year by a curator of the younger generation.
Curated by: Tia Čiček.
Organisation: Kino Šiška.
