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Near Light

Petra Varl's artistic practice is one of the most recognisable in Slovenia, for the artist has managed to develop a simple, yet characteristic art language which addresses the viewer in a direct manner. Since her very beginnings she has been creating series in various media, in which she builds on images that can at first glance be formally understood in the spirit of a pop-art strategy of dealing with the object or of a mass-produced image cult. However, her images also include a lot of intimacy. Petra Varl reduces the ideological charge of her chosen image with her extremely precise personal poetics, which allows the viewer to reflect upon the exclusively personal experience of the presented image. The most recognisable images are those that use their inner artistic logic to express the contrast between the image and the background upon which the artist decided to intervene. Whether it is a graphic print, a painting, a drawing on paper or even a metal cut out, Petra Varl's gestures are never merely a formal record of the object, for her gestures symbolise the contrasts between the various relations that emerge within society. Because of this her works are always torn between humour and sadness, love and pain, white and black and, last but not least, darkness and light.

In her latest exhibition the artist remains true to her subtle poetics, which are this time - on the formal level – combined with entirely new elements, which only someone who is more interested in the path Petra Varl took rather than the final images she creates would ascribe to her. The Near Light exhibition in the Božidar Jakac Gallery should be understood as a totally emptied space within which Petra Varl decided to reflect upon her past artistic participation and indicate the formal changes that occurred within her artistic practice. These changes are inseparably connected to the artist's return to the three-dimensional space and the detailed research of the materials that could enable this transition. Near Light thus addresses the emptied space on the symbolic as well as the formal level. If the emptied symbolic space represents the artist's thoughts on her own work, the formal aspect is linked to the emptied exhibition space of the Božidar Jakac Gallery. This serves as a basic premise to the current exhibition, within which Petra Varl glides through new expressive fields, which merge the rational, aesthetic and sensual with the artist's recognisable poetics. On one hand the elements that occupy the exhibition space provide the feeling of certainty, invite the viewer to reflect directly, while on the other hand these same elements function as “amplifiers” with which the artist tells the several hundred years old story of the exhibition space. In order to avoid the sudden, illogical exchange between the artistic language and an aggressive spatial intervention, Petra Varl uses materials and techniques that she has used in her previous “art stories”. However, this time she does not see them exclusively as a means for creating the final image, but she uses their formal characteristics as the carriers, with all the possibilities and disadvantages that they bring. They exist as they are, in their material and form, and they do not submit to the image as they did in the past. This might seem the most radical change in the artist's view of the work of art, which is on one hand an autonomous element, while it on the other hand compliments the other elements within the exhibition, i.e. leads the viewer's attention to experiencing the space as such.

However, this is not an explicitly haptic experience of the space, the Early Gothic architecture of the Church of the Virgin Mary, but primarily a symbiosis between the church and the ephemeral elements such as light, sound and movement. The exhibition combines four different elements, as the intrinsic quality of the works of art lies in their ability to react to the exhibition space. The environment, atmosphere, sound, light and movement are not merely external factors, but essential elements in the understanding of the architecture of the space. The ambience of four individual “active matters” lead the viewer into a game of unexpected aspects that open up the space. The exhibition Near Light includes four different elements, which are most powerfully visually interwoven in the axis of the view that runs across the central nave, all the way from the apse, which is located under the choir, to the presbytery with the main altar space. The central element of the exhibition is represented by paintings, forms of folded paper, which are reminiscent of a Gutai understanding of the painting canvas which uncompromisingly “escapes” from the gallery walls and into the space. At first glance they provide us with an inorganic feeling, but every single triangle or square is hand folded, and thus records even the subtlest differences within the space. The shapes of the paintings change through time due to the changes in light, temperature and air moisture, and this creates shadows on the surface. These shadows reflect the instability of their material base which gives the impression of some sort of presence that surpasses the presence of paper as a material. The simple structure of the artist’s paper fold provides an illusion of timeless strengthening of the space which runs into infinity. The physical and material antipode to the paintings are provided by the different coloured triangular metal structures, which on one hand function as aesthetic objects that are linked to the elements within the architectural space, while on the other hand function as a seat, with which the artist negates the formal mannerism for which she could have been reproached. The seats are not merely aesthetic objects with a function, for throughout the exhibition they symbolise the presence of light and the game of colours, which takes place in relation to the exhibition space itself. According to definition colour is a feeling, and its perception is influenced by long- and short-term phenomena, that people define as a characteristic of the light source that can be perceived by the eye. However, Petra Varl is not interested in the sole physical appearance of colour as she is in the role colours have in our lives. In visual experiences, in art, or as a metaphor for emotions, colours have become the central element of reflection. It seems that the seat is the most intimate expression of the artist, with which she addresses the visitor to consider his daily life, and while doing so uncompromisingly encounter the artist’s current experiences. Is there more colour when there is love or when there is pain? Does colour have a greater meaning in the morning, afternoon or in the evening? It is all of this and much more and at the same time nothing, and even though the seat is materially the most present element in the exhibition, it also speaks the loudest as regards the emptiness, the calm mind that the artist had dedicated to the visitor. The third element in the exhibition was developed by Petra Varl in cooperation with the Islandic composer Ólafur Arnalds, who has contributed his composition Near Light to the exhibition in the Božidar Jakac Gallery. Sound is one of those ephemeral elements, which, due to its (non)physical nature, encompasses the entire space and reveals even the most hidden spaces. Arnalds’s composition is co-installed in precisely defined intervals with the uncompromising Cage like silence of the Early Gothic architectural space. This creates the state of tension, expectation or the possibility of contemplation within the viewer. On the other hand, the cacophony, which emerges as a result of the space’s acoustics and the visitor’s movements through the exhibition space, creates a field of uncontrolled unrest. The final, fourth, but by no means least important element of the exhibition, can be found in the cooperation between the artist and the fashion designer Uroš Belantič. This cooperation directly addresses the issues of the visitor’s movements through space and how this co-creates the main visual axis of the project Near Light. This is an almost minimalist strategy of questioning the relation between body and space. In a Naumannesque manner Petra Varl choses the fourth element of the exhibition to be the body of the visitor and everything that this triggers (movement, sound etc.). In the light of the design of the visual axis of the main nave she controls the visitor’s physical appearance. The visitor tries to experience his experience in relation to space, at the same time as his body and experience establishes the space. In the same way as there is relation between the material and the immaterial, a co-dependent relation between the body and space exists in the context of this project. The moment the visitor enters the gallery space he finds himself in a “Brechtian epic theatre”, in which there is no wall that would separate the work of art, space and the visitors.

The exhibition Near Light emerges from the small, intimate, sensory and rational impulses of the artist and her desire to establish a dialogue with an exceptionally seductive, but demanding exhibition space. Petra Varl creates a choreography between four basic elements, which “toy” with the experience of the material reality in the worlds of the artist and visitors, and subtly connects them with the possibilities of the fleeting and momentarily. Suspense between the material and something that is on the edge of the material presence, between the visual and non-visual, is created within the space. The combination of elements that do not have a mighty formal presence culminate in some sort of “liberation” within the exhibition. Rather than through the physical inertia of mass and volume, which would fill the demanding exhibition space, the artist’s individually introduced elements are dynamic and open, and try to break the impression of weight and volume and in this way show the simple beauty of the empty architectural space. As a sincere derivative of the artist’s rational thoughts on the exhibition space, the exhibition Near Light and the short story of intimate confessions reveal the thoughts that are always stretched between experience and inexperience. The artist’s as well as the visitor’s.  

Tevž Logar, text at the exhibition in Galerija Božidar Jakac, Kostanjevica na Krki, 2018