Photo Album

The Depiction of Hominess and Elitism of Art: with their contribution to the development of visual communications in Slovenia, the artists (Zora Stančič and Petra Varl) are erasing the borders between the firmly anchored concepts of understanding art. Intimate, homey, sentimental: all of these motifs can be transferred into the language of gallery art and in this way even ennoble fixed artistic expressions. Moreover, the spectators can have the pleasure of experiencing topics that are close to them and occasionally even smell like a home-baked pie and a cup of hot coffee. (Tanja Mastnak in the catalog Zora Stančič & Petra Varl – zadnjih dvajset let [Zora Stančič & Petra Varl: The Last Twenty Years; p. 25; Ljubljana International Center of Graphic Arts, June 2008)

Recognizability: Petra’s projects have been based on a stereotype, the relations between well-known characters and heroes, great joy, and everyday problems. The narrative and its heroes were literally visible to everyone and quickly became an indispensable part of urban life; at the same time, they adapted to and stood out of the environment, they stood out just like personal life always stands out from the public image . . . (Barbara Borčić, ibid., p.139).
In addition to the recognizability of Petra Varl’s art as defined by the same author (Barbara Borčić), she also uses the terms “clarity/sign character, picturesque nature/decoration, reproducibility, communication, narrativity/stories, and process/variations.” These terms – or better, labels – that introduced Petra Varl to the Slovenian artistic stage twenty years ago have remained the “milestones” or constants in the work of this Slovenian artist. Perhaps one should draw special attention to the increasingly clearly defined relation between the private and public, which has been separately formed – of course among younger established Slovenian artists – or proceeded from the context of ars intermedia (as first defined by Peter Weibel), in which the artist functions as a mediator that reinterprets images already depicted (e.g., comics, ads, photos, screens, and displays). This form of artistic work, which would not have existed in Slovenia without the definitely positive evaluation of the impact of pop art, remains a spiritus agens in selected examples even in today’s conditions, without losing its freshness. However, it is clear that it confronts the artist with the inevitable postulate of an increasingly deeper and wider relation to images already depicted, which in their reinterpretation must reveal the relation between the private and public mentioned in the introduction even in the most intimate dimensions strongly influenced by personality.

It seems that in this regard one should pay attention to Petra Varl’s latest installation or arrangement at the gallery in Klagenfurt. Hominess as one of the most recognizable degrees of privacy enriched by sentiment, and return to memories, which can be connected with the nostalgia for a (renewed) family at a time that was shaped by a different social context than today and to the same extent satisfied large masses (the 1950s and 1960s of socialist democracy): photography as a clean and simple documentary medium that filled the family album with records of childhood, family intimacy, pride of all sorts, and essentially minor values that were nonetheless important for that time such as one’s own car (the popular Fiat 600) . . . and one could find more similar things in such a family album. With Varl, this type of photography can also serve as a starting point for expressing herself in a different (i.e., drawing or painting) medium. And all this in the sign of love as well as recognizing existence within the context of the private and public profile: the Slovenian lexical derivative from dom ‘home’ to domačnost ‘hominess’ and the barely perceivable transfer from patriotism (domoljubje) and even homesickness (domotožje) into the public = homeland (domovinski) sphere. And can this still be identified in today’s globalized world? Or is this (unfortunately) only a rhetorical question to which Petra Varl (also) seeks answers in the private sphere, which the consumer spectacle nonetheless touched upon in a way and provided with a different insight into the social sphere; a spectacle that the artist refuses to subject to or become addicted to?

Aleksander Basin, from the catalogue Heimat/Domovina, 2010

Links to works:

• My Granddad in a Topolino and the rest of the Family
• Exhibition Heimat/Domovina