Family portraits

Barbara, Grega, Dolores, Maja, Almira, Jure are only a few of the two hundred portraits of  equal size that represent typified images of faces. Each portrait consists of three uni­form, colored surfaces, three organic shapes - the face, the hair and the background. They are drawn with the most basic strokes that at first remind us of childlike play painting. The differences between them are minimal and the portraits are pic­tured "en face" or in profile, smiling and with closed eyes. The stylish nuances of the selected colors create a sense of congruity while their plane-like application emphasizes the feeling of two-dimensionality. There is no depth of space between the face and the back­ground. The face actually flows into the background or better said the background is an extension of the face. There is nothing superfluous and nothing lacking in these images. The achieved optimal relationship between the colors and the lines in a simple, centrally symmetrical composition evokes a feeling of comfort and intimacy.

In a gallery space the pictures can be hung at will in various combinations that make possible an ornamen­tal effect. The images of faces function as modem orna­ments, decorations that adorn the selected spaces.

Other works by Petra Varl also have that ornamental effect. A series of equal-size pictures that represents playful auto-portraits with various backgrounds such a field of blossoming daisies and so on. An ornament in the shape of Benetton's white cow on a blue black back-ground was the central motive of the wallpaper of the installation "Father with the Milking Machine" in an exhibition in Graz, Austria. In the show "My Mother's Pie" a red apple on a white background replaced the endearing cow.

The "Zvezda and Odeon" story from the "Ljubjančani!" installation in the Zvezda Park in Ljubljana that imitat­ed public advertising pillars and functioned as an annual calendar for announcing site-specific Urbanaria art project events also worked as an urban ornament.

"Twelve posters as twelve frames of a love strip," pic­tured kind of love story that we usually only fantasize about. In January the protagonists don't even look at each other. In February Odeon begins to flirt with Zvezda. In March he brings her flowers and in April they fight because Zvezda goes dancing with another man. In May they sit on a bench and gaze at each other

December. Love takes its course, as it should, without fault (other than that, which is part of its course) along the predictably repeating and expected social pattern.

But the ornamental effect in Petra Varl's works is only the bait that lures the observer towards more complex contents. In the Zvezda and Oden story, behind the attractive ornamental effect, the individual's social bindings appear. The ornamental sense in the schema-teed portraits is also misleading. The Facial drawings are actual portraits, an art-historic genre that in repre­senting a man's face indirectly also expresses the indi­vidual's standing and the existing social norms. The tides also indicate that these are portraits. Barbara, Grega, Dolores, Maja, Almira, Jure are the first names of the artist family members, friends and acquaintances.

When viewing the portraits we expect to be able to assign the pictured faces to a real person. But Petra Varl’s portraits are different. It is this difference that reveals the essence of created works. They speak of the individual as a social being and of his relative freedom.

The astute observer will notice the differences among the depicted faces, the round or oval facial type, a longer or shorter nose, the hairstyle, the beard or the glasses. But these little particularities sooner point to typical facial categories found in medical and cosmetics manuals than to the identity of the represented individ­ual. The drawing of facial characteristics is adopted from schematized drawings in scientific works. That is why, just as the genre of portrait drowns the ornament, the pictures of faces loose the initial correlation with naive, childish play. The new link takes the viewer to the adult world of the deliberate and experienced, which is capable of association and abstraction.

Consequently these small differences do not help the viewer to recognize the real person. And the same goes for the pictured subjects themselves. Only after the title of the work and the image are brought into line do the images become more determinable. The brunette Lea is not a person from among the category of brunettes but is die red haired Lea from next door. Sometimes the subjects themselves feel that another image would bet­ter fit them, for they may have recently acquired glasses, shared their beard or dyed their hair. The initial confu­sion in the recognition of the image should not be attributed to the fact that the artist made the portraits from memory, on the basis of a photograph and in the absence of the subject. It is due more to the artist's intention that the portraits be interchangeable, if needed.

Schematized portraits that rely on the listing of names for recognition belong to the category of the so-called typified portraits that are characteristic for the Antique, the Middle Ages and for modem an. One of the great connoisseurs of the portrait genre, Dr. Luc Menaše sees them as the antipode of realistic portraits in which the depicted image follows the characteristics of the sub­ject's face. Yet Petra Varl nevertheless conjures the real person. Wherein lays this about-turn?

The interchangeably of the portraits suggest a con­temporary man that is defined by Quid, flexible and manifold identities. But is the notion of identity still meaningful today? Rastko Močnik writes in the editori­al of the January-February 2001 issue of the M'zin magazine, "When we think that someone wants to take it away from us of it we are upset. But we also don't like it when someone wants to label us with one. We feel that our identity is somehow intimately ours, that it is part of our authenticity and we want it to be left alone. Yet we also want and demand of others to accept it. However much it may belong to us we still feel that it is not perfect, that it actually does not exist if others do not validate it. We jealously guard and inti­mately nurture it — while it just stands for our adher­ence to the collectivity and marks our objective, external status.

Identity is a social bond. Depending on the group the portrayed subject is classified into and on the relation he has with other subjects in the group his various social ties are manifested and his identity is formed. One hundred and fifty portraits allow for arbitrary grouping and symbolically illustrate the plurality of identities. The exhibition in the Equrna gallery showed the portrayed subjects in a long line of Petra Varl's friends and acquaintances and in several groups of families. The pictures could have also been hung differ­ently and in each of these different arrangements a per­son could have played a different role. Once she could be a friend of Petra Varl's, another time a graduate of the Academy of Art and yet another time a collaborator art project.

The fact that the arrangement is not predetermined and that the grouping is not permanent, symbolically tell­tales about the two other characteristics of modern identity, flexibility and fluidity. In December 2000 Nela Malečkar described them at the occasion of the Equrna gallery exhibition, "The families are not made of one piece but are composed of individuals. They can at any time join another group or by procreation add anew member. Children will grow into men and women when you have a sex change."

The identity of a portrait's subject, no longer stems from his facial characteristics, albeit reduced to a mini­mum, - these are borrowed from some typified facial categories - but from various social bonds that anchor him and for which he lives and strives. In this manner Petra Varl opens a new chapter in the genre of portrai­ture. The typified portrait also expresses the subject's identity. The schematized images become realistic. The observers complement them with the specific and in this manner the portraits acquire their blood, flesh and souls. They touch us and become intimate. We can almost embrace them.

Thus the schematization reflects the spirit of modern times. The world we belong to has changed radically in the last ten years. Previous values have been replaced by new ones and these stem from the new rapports of force. Life has become more dynamic and unforesee­able. Man has more freedom, but also more anguish, stress and uncertainty. Manifold, flexible and fluid identities can be a constraint or a privilege. That is why the expression of bliss on the faces of the portraits evoked by the smile and the closed eyes can be seen as sleep, death or ecstasy.

Liljana Stepančič, 2000

Links to works:

• Family Portraits