The group exhibition Nothing Is Forever is dedicated to contemporary practices in media art. After three years of ongoing research on the status of media images and the visual distortion of viewer perception, three local authors and groups will present their recent projects, in which the transmitted image gradually transitions into factual matter. The transmitted image is thus supplemented or replaced by first-hand experience.

The work of Aljaž Celarc, Dan Adlešič & Klemen Ilovar and Name: focuses primarily on the idea of the transitory, the volatile and the ephemeral, all of which represent a distinct response to the state of affairs in the contemporary world. The only permanent thing in life is constant change. Nothing is forever, everything is in motion. This idea, on the one hand, refers to the creative practices of the featured artists, who are constantly on the lookout for new solutions and don’t merely settle for established patterns; on the other hand, it also relates to the never-ending natural and social processes of formation, change and disappearance. The exhibition will showcase three spatial interventions related to the perception and organisation of the living environment, be it natural or artificial.

Moreover, the authors, all of them originally active in photography, design and street art, draw attention to certain situations and phenomena that have a defining influence on our time. These are issues related to ecology and our relationship with and towards the natural environment, one that changes constantly and irrevocably as a result of human impact in ours, the Anthropocene age. These are the issues at the core of a person’s unwavering loyalty to a certain ideology in the world that, being heterogeneous and complex, precludes truly radical forms of creation and utterance. These are the issues connected with the self-evident nature of a work of art in a world saturated with a multitude of images and content.

In his project In Vivo, Aljaž Celarc focuses on glacial and post-glacial landscapes, their dynamics, and the way they leave their mark on the life of this planet. If In Vitro was about storing a piece of ice from an Alpine glacier and replicating it into its original form using 3D technology, the next stage, entitled In Vivo, features a group of volunteers moving an improvised cooling system to a mountainside that has been carved by a glacier, where the piece of ice is re-created under artificial conditions. This piece of ice is then laid into one of the crevices created by glacial activity. In so doing, Celarc raises urgent questions related to the rapid changes in our natural environment and to the ability of the human race to maintain this delicate balance using artificial means – as well as the question whether there is any sense in any of this. Performed by a futuristic-looking group of people in an Alpine setting, this Sisyphean task can be understood both as a visualisation of the future of glacial landscapes and as a metaphor for humankind’s Lilliputian size in relation to the vast and resilient natural world.

In his work Nothing Is Forever, artist Name: highlights the fragility of an image created from scrap material and in situ in the exhibition space. The image, designed as a written slogan, chiefly serves to point out (from the author’s point of view) the volatile and contradictory nature of the art system and its protagonists (including he himself). Name: is primarily a street artist, and in recent years this art form/practice has occasionally become interesting to the (high) art world. But a street artist, whose work is essentially to perform or conduct illegal interventions in public and private spaces, cannot perform and build his/her own brand on the basis of his/her name. Which is why the current unstable spatial installation, which could easily be blown away by a mere gust of wind, invites the viewer to intervene – because sooner or later (but certainly at the end of the exhibition) it will only be recorded and remain preserved in the form of a document.

And the new dialogic work of Dan Adlešič & Klemen Ilovar is an in-depth discussion on the status of an object within the hierarchy of contemporary reality. Using visual associations that reflect their work process, they research the thin line between the artefact and its pedestal that serves to highlight the artefact’s dedicated function. Authors create a dialogue between the artistic and the non-artistic, between the common object and the object carrying a surplus symbolic value, thereby forging unexpected and associative visual links. In the past century, most any object could acquire the status of a work of art, if only the artist (explicitly acknowledged by the system) declared it as such. The work thus demonstrates the ambivalent nature of discourse and the volatility of a work of art which, compared to a useful, designed object, is often understood as useless matter.

Exhibition author: Miha Colner
Authors: Aljaž Celarc, Klemen Ilovar & Dan Adlešič, Name:

The exhibition is part of the “Project space” programme. The programme is composed of smaller, shorter-run exhibitions chosen on an annual open call basis and which take place in the west wing of the Fužine castle. The exhibitions are co-produced together with partners and follow the criteria for uniformity of heritage in the fields of architecture, design and photography.

Location

MAO, Project Space
Pot na Fužine 2
Ljubljana

Info

infobio(at)mao.si
+386 1 54842 80/74

We reserve the right to change the programme.

Organization

MAO