Opening on Thursday, 24 September, at 7 pm
9. – 31. 10. 2020

The inviolability of what a photograph depicts has been considered somewhat sacred since the beginning of the medium itself. Even a small edit to the snapshot or damage to the physical photograph can change the meaning and clarity of what is conveyed. The mandate of the integrity of photography is, above all, present in its primary use – as a tool for depicting reality. It is thought to portray a continued, coherent, and an intact reality, which is not only impossible but also illusory.

This very notion has been the subject of exploration in the artistic oeuvre of Eva Petrič, a versatile artist, spanning over a decade. In her work, she interferes with the meaning as well as the materiality of photography on several levels. She uses it as a component of her own artistic expression, manipulates it, and further employs it as an interpretative tool of her own world view rather than reality itself. She places photography at the centre of her artistic production, where she combines it with music, objects, and texts. Using it as a starting point of her multimedia installations, she aims to create new forms of expression, by using a variety of techniques, predominantly montage and superimposed elements, by which she further manipulates the initial photographs. In this way, she adds new layers of reality and depth, while combining all elements of her installations into a narrative whole.

Often present as an issue in Eva’s work is the deconstruction of reality with reference to the artist’s inner world, which she visually translates into her artistic creations. Her work remains consistent in her signature aesthetic, imbued with poetic sentiment, her own life’s philosophy, and abstraction. The emphasis is on the atmospheric totality of individual works and installations that act as analogies of a deeper contemplation of human existence.

Along the same lines, the artist wonders in her newest series and installation SOUNDeSCAPES – Lullaby for Drones, whether something consciously imperceptible exists? The artist’s purpose is to enable us “to hear the image and to see the sound”. For this purpose, she will use photos from her series Lullaby in various versions and media, as well as the sound entitled Lullaby for Drones (Drone Lullaby), which are intended to create sensations of seeing the sound and hearing the image in a space. Besides the fairly philosophical question, the series also refers to the degradation of the climate, referenced in the icy surfaces of the works. The artist wonders…

When a chunk of a glacier breaks off and collapses into the sea roaring, and no one hears or sees it – does this mean that the chunk of ice did not break off and crash deafeningly into the ocean? Are we not experiencing climate warming, is the ice not melting, and our planet isn’t changing?

You can read more about the author and her work here.

Text: Špela Pipan