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The Book of Serigraphs

The Artist's book Petra Varl has created in cooperation with MGLC is a compilation and adaptation of two exhibitions that took place in January 2009 in Maribor. The first featured a series of drawings in the Knights’ Hall of the Maribor Art Gallery and the second, a series of signs, shown concurrently at the Maribor Multimedia Center Kibla.

Drawing is Petra Varl’s elementary means of expression. It gives her artwork an unmistakable mark. The figure, which is the mainstay of the author’s narrative, is laid down with a fluid line, drawn in ink or pencil, printed as a serigraph or sewn. Numerous factors contributed to Petra Varl’s present recognition: frequent usage of public spaces, lasting, recognizable figures, universality of her language, casual approach towards the public… The figures named Zvezda and Odeon appeared in public and gallery spaces in the nineties and showed up in very different stories, from chocolate boxes to magazine covers and postcards to an advertising column. Around the year 2000 Petra Varl began working with smaller, more intimate formats – schematized and typified portraits in lively, clean colors with which she furnished apartments of friends and acquaintances and gallery spaces. In 2005 she returned to classical pencil drawing. Her search led her to sewn contours and portraits on one hand and drawings on tracing paper and etched glass on the other. Recently she reverted to simple ink drawing on paper, has shown her work in Maribor and now she has tied it into a book form.

The term “artist’s book” is used for a work of art that is made in the form of a book. An artist’s book is often a cross section of various techniques, technologies, modes of expression and media. If this form once had an experimental character and often expressed rebellion and criticism, it is today an established practice. Petra Varl employs it just as naturally as jumbo billboards or postcards. While the approaches are different, the communication with the public remains an important principle.  Compared to the exhibition at the Maribor Art Galley, where the drawings “the Smoker” and “Drawing after Cranach” were executed directly onto the wall and therefore had a different significance, the drawings in the book are equivalent. The book format 50 x 70 cm contributes to the monumentality of the drawings. The book begins with the author’s portrait, which introduces the viewer to a narrative that is actually not a definite story but just a sequence of images, glimpses and story fragments. The drawings are essentially small, every day addresses, which constitute a personal and, at the same time, an all familiar universe. It’s most frequent themes are the relation man-woman, interpersonal relationships, general clichés, quotidian happenstances, wishes etc. The author often places her figures in pairs, where the present meets the past, the childlike the adult, yesterday with today, where the individual appears in different roles, that is, in several roles at once.

Figures and objects extracted from their context and placed onto the neutral whiteness of paper acquire new meaning and become signs. They assume the role of the signifier of certain contents. Only without the background, frame and context the drawing is available for the interpretation and meaning that we wish to ascribe it. It is the very meaning, which the artist ascribes to her drawings that propels her works onto another level.

The meaning is most often defined by the caption, a short comment or the title of the work. In pour case, for instance, Man Woman, Mother Daughter, Sexy Shy, You are driving me crazy etc. But Petra Varl's signs are not ordinary signs as they are not unambiguous. On the contrary, they warn us that the significance we ascribe to things/people/events is only a function of our view. The mother/daughter figures are the same even though they are named differently – Mother i.e. Daughter. Sexy Shy is ane and the same figure. The Man and Woman figures are different only by a mustache. And so on. There are numerous possible angles for interpretation but Petra Varl mainly seeks a relaxed, playful and humorous approach to topics, which do not originate from reflection but rather from the experiencing of the world and the creative process itself. We should not forget that the artistic context here is mostly about the desire to express itself, to narrate.

In works of art the individual often shifts into the general and vice versa. To parallel, compare, interweave, in short the confrontation of the sexes is the central theme of this book. The point of contact, the meeting ground of both poles is the author herself. She is the point at which a and b touch, transfuse and interchange. It is the author who begins the narrative with the first page and who unifies both poles in the formula a+b. Petra Varl’s exhibitions are never without a personal note. What differs from show to show is the manner of this presence. This time the spokeswoman is the Smoker. The chief protagonist appears as the Mother
and/ or Daughter as Sexy and/ or Shy, as the nymph drawn after Lucas Cranch the elder and, en passant, she assumes various other roles. It seems that she’s the one writing the scenario, the one who alternates, adopts and discards roles and that she does what she does because she feels like it. In short, it is not the roles that make her but she who makes them. With the help of the role and through it she talks about things that touch her. But not only her, for if they touch the author, they also concern other women. And if they concern other women, they concern men. The themes are always universal

Andreja Borin, tekst  written for the presentation of The Book At the International Centre of Graphic Arts, 2010

 

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