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©2010 Petra Varl
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AT HOME: Architects France and Marta Ivanšek, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana
25. 03. – 16. 05. 2010
I bought 40 plastic buckets in four different colors (prettty much the store's entire stock) as my contribution to the At Home exhibition. I wanted to print my figurative motifs on them. A quote by France Ivanšek that I found in his 1988 book One Family Home insipred this purchase, "House cleaning is one of the most time consuming chores. As it is also one of the most strenuous great care should be taken in the apartment to make the task easier." Because printing onto the oval shaped bucket turned out to be technically too demanding I simply drew the buckets on all the different materials I could get my hands on that day and which reminded me of the times the architects Marta and France Ivanšek did their work. I wrote some texts about cleaning and hung everything on one of the walls of the Museum of Modern Art. The texts are "anti-cleaning" and quite funny, so I decided to stick them on to the buckets anyway. In the edition of 40 pieces they are up for sale in the museum's store.
Curators: Martina Malešič and Anja Planišček
Interventions by artists: Vesna Bukovec, Vadim Fiškin, Dejan Habicht, Žiga Kariž, Tanja Lažetić, Tadej Pogačar, radioCona (Irena Pivka, Brane Zorman), Zora Stančić, Petra Varl
About the exhibition:
A presentation of a pair of architects who were very influential in the development of architecture in Slovenia in the second half of the 20th century. Based on research, their projects were progressive and unique in their time: the Murgle residential area, a furniture line for the company Meblo, the store Interier, and nursing homes. Interventions by contemporary artists also form part of the exhibition.
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Drawings, Maribor Art Gallery
28. 01. – 28. 02. 2010
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Signs, Kibla, Maribor
28. 01. – 13. 02. 2010
I made the a + b series as serigraphs on metal plates and hung them as a kind of traffic signs in the Kibla Gallery. Their final destination are meant to be forgotten metal posts or town facades, I plan to hang them onto to incite the passersby.
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Man And Woman or What Happend With Zvezda And Odeon?
13. 11. 2009 – 14. 02. 2010, Gender Check, MUMOK, Wienna, Austria
20. 03 .2010 – 13. 06. 2010, Gender Check, Zaceta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland
"Gender Check. Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe" is the first comprehensive exhibition featuring art from Eastern Europe since the 1960s based on the theme of gender roles. The exhibition paints an exceptionally diverse picture of a chapter in art history that until recently had been largely unknown and that could also act as an important addition to contemporary gender discourse.
The Young Ladies that were part of my broader Zvezda and Odeon project were selected for the Gender Check group exhibition at MuMoK in Vienna. When I attempted to draw Zvezda and the other two young ladies they turned out quite differently than those from 1994. I felt as though the figures in the drawing were resisting me and were saying that they had changed in the last 15 years and that there was no way back. So I went with my gut feeling and drew a present-day man and woman. Zvezda and Odeon have changed. They no longer wear silly glasses and they look better and smarter. If earlier my story featured them as stereotypical representatives of their genders, they now became a more realistic man and woman, who increasingly resemble each other and can interchangeably appear in either a male or female role.
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"Very simple drawings", Novi Hram Gallery, Sarajevo
15. 10. - 30. 10. 2009
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I ♥ Susak
27th July - 24th August 2009, Atelier 513, Susak, Croatia
Beach Chairs in front of the ATELLIER 513 gallery in the Upper Village of Susak, where my ink drawing exhibition can be seen till the end of August 2009.
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Poletje/Summer, suggestins for the permanent collection
July 2nd - September 10th 2009, The Maribor Gallery of Fine Arts
When profesor Tomaž Brejc asked me whether I felt a bit like a "Mariborian," now that I work in Maribor, I replied that of course I do. That is how I, who live in Ljubljana, ended up in the "Summer" exhibition in Maribor. Althouh the title of the exhibition "Summer" wasn't known yet at the time, I proposed to participate with my "Swimmer", which the galery selected as the invitation poster for the exhibition.
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Zora Stančič & Petra Varl:
The Past Twenty Years, 1. July – 31. Avgust 2008, MGLC, Ljubljana
I've known Zora for a long time. In 1988 we had a show at the Bežigrad Gallery of lithographs that we had made during our student years at the Academy of Fine Arts. Subsequently we each had numerous solo shows. This summer, after twenty years, we have a show together again at MGLC. The opening of this retrospective was on July 1st, 2008.