Highlights of the 2020 season at the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) include the first major presentation in Slovenia of the performance artist Nora Turato; a site-specific installation by Andrej Škufca; a retrospective of the work of Adriena Šimotová that draws on the heritage of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts; and an exhibition by Invader, who returns to Ljubljana after fifteen years, this time as a printmaker.
Andrej Škufca: Black Market
(March 20–May 24, 2020)
Andrej Škufca’s work presents a complex system characterized by technological design, processes borrowed from industrial manufacturing, and synthetic materials. Not only do his installations combine technological and fictional elements, they also produce immersive and seemingly animated environments, in which human agents no longer play a central role. Škufca’s Black Market comprises a set of variables. It acquires the shifting forms of oil pipelines, transoceanic fibre-optic cables, conger eels, exoskeletons, and the earliest forms of tubular multicellular microorganisms. It embodies theories about modular design and self-assembling parts of the sort that Keller Easterling describes as “spatial software.” The sculptures represent the transformation of matter into infinite combinations. They root themselves in science-fiction narratives while giving form to the biotechnological corpus of cutting-edge speculative design and theory. Presented together, theory and sculpture combine as praxis for a terrifying but open-ended future.
Curated by Àngels Miralda, an independent curator and writer, Barcelona.
Invader: Prints on Paper
(June 5–August 30, 2020)
With uncompromising activity, creative enthusiasm, and commitment to the ethical principles of street art, Invader has for more than 20 years been instrumental in making street art an increasingly important part of contemporary art. Invader is an artist, an individual, a movement, an app, a game, and a lifestyle. He is a street art phenomenon who, since first presenting his work at MGLC in 2006, has become a global star in the art world. Now, 15 years later, he returns to Ljubljana. This exhibition will bring together for the first time his publications, maps of invasions, and nearly one hundred original screen prints, lithographs, woodcuts, and other graphic works. Accompanied by an extensive catalogue of the artist’s prints, the exhibition will also include a print made especially for the Ljubljana show.
Curated by Božidar Zrinski, a curator at MGLC.
Nora Turato
(September 11, 2020–February 28, 2021)
The Croatian-born performance artist Nora Turato, who is based in Amsterdam, explores the paradoxes of the digital age through language. The mesmerizing effect of her performances stems from the unique combination of the artist’s concise, disciplined renderings, an eclectic concoction of familiar sound-bites from sources ranging from advertising to science, and their uncanny detachment from their semantic origins. They echo the hyper-production of information and knowledge and, consequently, the deflation and disposability of language. Language today ages fast and furiously. Turato’s performances masterfully pin down this moment, shuffling both its anxiety and potential in a sort of a liberating irreverence. The show at MGLC will follow her attempts to encapsulate this “now” while mirroring the precariousness of our society in the ever faster fraying of language. Apart from her performances, the show will feature Turato’s video and graphic works, which serve to extend the performances’ unawed corroding of the sanctimony of art.
Curated by Vladimir Vidmar, an independent curator and writer, Ljubljana.
Adriena Šimotová: Encounter. Touch and Imprint
(November 27, 2020–February 28, 2021)
Adriena Šimotová (1926–2014) is one of the most acclaimed figures in Czech visual art. This selective retrospective at MGLC features artworks in which Šimotová radicalized the existentially conceived topic of the human personality while engaging in an earnest determination of the conditions and relationships she found relevant. She perceived her work as an open communicative relationship, with its ethical and spiritual conditionality and ontological correlations of particular importance. In this context, the artist’s exquisite array of methods and vehicles of expression allowed her to explore and reflect on touch and imprint, aspects she understood as integral to the articulation of her authentic artistic statement. Reflecting on the relationship between touch and imprint, she worked with a keen awareness of her own and other people’s corporeality.
The exhibition is being prepared in collaboration with the Adriena Šimotová and Jiří John Foundation, Prague.
Curated by Pavel Brunclík, a curator at the Adriena Šimotová and Jiří John Foundation.
The International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) is a museum dedicated to the art of printing and a creative centre with residencies; it is located in two historic buildings in Ljubljana’s main park – Tivoli Mansion and Švicarija. MGLC is also the organizer and producer of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts.
