In his distinctive style of raw, black & white analogue photography, the author intuitively explores and captures fleeting glimpses of nocturnal street revelry, agile spectacles and sincere benders on film.
The scenes are characterised by robust contrast, strong grain and expression, enhanced by spontaneous framing, the selection of irritating details and generic content that remains unencumbered, uncensored and unreserved in both its specificity and mundanity. The photographs were taken in large numbers over the past five years and include wild partying, drinking sprees, pleasant social gatherings, strolls, dog baths, peeing, kissing and dancing, accompanied by urban still lifes of traffic signs, rubbish bins, empty cans, bicycles, fences, sidewalks, cars, ashtrays, lone shoes, unmade beds and half-smoked cigarettes.
A more rational selection of the more than five thousand snapshots is presented in Spodik. In just over 200 pages, the book presents a deliberate interplay of the artist’s intellect and intuition; while the images were captured randomly and spontaneously, the editing of the sequence, the photographic development and the final selection of the photographs were more deliberate and thoughtfully designed. A similar contrast dictates the book’s exterior design: the hand-stamped covers in the artist’s handwriting, along with the end sheet, are marked by organic yellow patterns derived from scanned images of first-person urination. In this respect, the book emerges as a coherent whole, uniting the artist’s affinity for realism, direct honesty and vulnerability, which he pursues both in practice and in his broader understanding of human existence. The title of the cardinal work and the exhibition – Spodik, which in the dialect of the artist from Radenci refers to “something that is underneath, below” – alludes to the framing method, downward gaze and chosen yet popular trash aesthetic with its quasi-trivial content, which in the artist’s eyes (and ours, to be honest) is still touching and increasingly appealing.
Curated by: Maša Žekš
Free admission.
4. 2.–5. 4. 2025
Organization: DobraVaga / Kino Šiška.
