ADAPTATION
Povšetova ulica, Ljubljana
30 November – 30 December 2023
Group exhibition as part of Plaza protocol platform
We are not sure whether they already exist, but we know we need to build them.
Artificial objects, bound together with their surroundings into a string infrastructure. Spreading into their surroundings by employing the entropy of their materials, the topology of their location, the vegetation, the changing weather patterns, and other such variables. Objects forced into adapting by the changes in the atmosphere. Something that is compelled to conform if it is to continue to exist, trapped in a relationship where everything is already being shifted. Each opportunity for intrusion compromises the object, and differences in the concentrations of these opportunities lead to irregularities in the densities of their distributions. Territories lose the last semblance of domesticity. The host and the guest become equivalent and interchangeable, their form seized by their extract that reduces and adapts them. This reduction-adjustment is not a segregation but a concentration of the extracted detail spreading through the entire atmosphere. Brutal demands adjust the objects’ shapes. Here, adaptation is an economy of interests, a form built out of the necessity for survival. Relationships between bodies and the environment manifest on surfaces—particles in interstices. Forms deviate from strict spatial conformity and embody a nuanced interplay. Adaptation is a endless process, a condensed dance of forces where forms are reshaped and reconfigured in response to changing conditions. This is not a passive surrender but an active engagement with the environment, a negotiation where the boundaries are constantly tested and transformed. A negative space that absorbs and is itself absorbed into its environment. Reactors. And heresies of specializations. A merged multiplicity fragments.
New portal is open, you can search for it at Plaza Protocol platform.
Exhibition Opening Program
Thursday, November 3th 2023
➤14:00 and 15:00 @ Povšetova, Ljubljana* / Guided exhibition tours with artists on-site
➤18:00 @ Kavarna Rafinerija, Cukrarna / Opening event with socializing on the release of the thematic issue and the 10th anniversary of the Šum magazine
Opening times*
3.12. at 13:00 / Sun
8.12. at 14:00 / Fri
10.12. at 13:00 / Sun
15.12. at 14:00 / Fri
17.12. at 13:00 / Sun
22.12. at 14:00 / Fri
23.12. CANCELED
*Prior registration at rea@projekt-atol.si is required for participation in the exhibition tours!
Colophon
Plaza Protocol: ADAPTATION, 2023
Exhibiting artists: Živa Božičnik Rebec, Samra Buljić, Jon Derganc, Maša Knapič, Ištvan Išt Huzjan, Ema Maznik Antić in Maks Bricelj, Andrej Škufca, Slavko Tihec, Neja Zorzut, Lara Žagar
Curators: Neja Zorzut and Andrej Škufca
Consultant: Tjaša Pogačar
Production: Projekt Atol Institute (Rea Vogrinčič & Uroš Veber)
Film: Blaž Murn & Maja Prelog
Design: Jaka Neon
Website: Marko Damiš
Thanks to: MG+MSUM and The Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana Institute
The exhibition is part of the Plaza Protocol platform that is curated by Tjaša Pogačar and produced by Projekt Atol Institute in collaboration with the Šum magazine, with the support of the Ministry of Culture and the Department of Culture of the City Municipality of Ljubljana.
Bios
Živa Božičnik Rebec practice is speculative and object oriented as also investigative in materials and their substancial chimeras and alterations. She is invested in projects which are connected in a way with outsideness in the open- end relations of ecological and environmental estrangements and its technological developments. Her works have been exhibited in Slovenia and abroad in such venues and events as Aksioma project space, Maska- Nova pošta, 34th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts Iskra Delta at The International Centre of Graphic Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Modern Art, Škuc Gallery, Simulaker Gallery, Cmurek Castle and Fashion/Art Toronto, Canada.
Živa Božičnik RebecSamra Buljić (1999) is currently pursuing her studies in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (UL ALUO) in Ljubljana. She creates through various media, such as painting, drawing and digital graphics. Her main interest is exploring the complexity of the visible structures and the possibility od developing an indefinable or undifferentiated image, deriving the content from body horror, transmutation and different abstract entities. She participated in the group exhibition Appointment 4.0 (2019) and Appointment 7.0 (2023) at DobraVaga and in the group exhibition Terminal Drift (2022) at MoTA LAB.
Jon Derganc lives and works in Ljubljana. He graduated from ALUO in Ljubljana in 2011. He
completed his Master’s thesis in 2014 in Kolkata, India. He works predominantly in the
photographic medium; film and digital. His work explores the limits of photography’s ability to
represent the world objectively, while at the same time exploring its ability to transform the
photographic representation into a new – photographic – reality.
Maša Knapič completed her undergraduate studies in painting at ALUO, where she is currently completing her master’s degree. She presented her works on solo exhibitions: Sharpening…please steady your device at DobraVaga (2021) and as part of the project Unknown Area: ft.props at Alkatraz Gallery (2022). She has also participated in several group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad, including Galllery Gallery (2022), Gallery of the Bank of Slovenia (2020), Layer House (2018), Zala Gallery (2021) and Knifer Gallery in Osijek (2022).
Ištvan Išt Huzjan graduated from painting at the Accademia di belle arti di Venezia in Italy in 2005. In 2009 he finished an artist-in-residency programme on Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and finished several residencies between 2010 and 2012, among others the National Art Studio in Changdong, Seoul, South Korea and Lokaal 01 in Antwerpen, Belgium. In 2010 he cofounded the artist collective ‘Project Goleb’ in Amsterdam and in 2011 he was nominated for both the OHO award in Slovenia and the Henkel Art Award in Austria. In 2012 he joined the ‘Simplon Express’, a group exhibition set a train traveling from Zagreb to Paris, ‘Taxi Avant Minuit’ a project for ‘La Galerie Des Locataires’ involving a happening in a Taxi on FIAC, Paris and he traveled from Seoul, South Korea to Ljubljana, Slovenia by land as an artistic performance. Since 2013 he is running an exhibition space in Brussels called Coffre-Fort together with Gregoire Motte and Thibaut Espiau as the Artists Club. Ištvan Išt Huzjan lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Ema Maznik Antić (1998) obtained a BA in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (2021), where she is currently pursuing an MA in the same field. She has also received the institution’s Prešeren Prize. She has presented her work Hi-Res Prints for Burial T-shirts together with Maks Bricelj at Aksioma (2023), the individual exhibition Lost Cargo at DobraVaga (2022), in group exhibitions Plaza Protocol – Deposit at Mala galerija BS (2022), Terminal Drift at MoTA LAB (2022) and s04e03 (2021) as part of the student pop-up gallery 7:069 at Alcatraz Gallery, and in the student exhibition Ni belega platna (2020) at Mala galerija BS. She lives and works in Ljubljana.
Maks Bricelj (1991) obtained a BA in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2016, and an MA in Sculpture from the same institution in 2021. He has held several individual exhibitions, including Hi-Res Prints for Burial T-shirts together with Ema Maznik Antić at Aksioma (2023), Gel Chambers at R Space (2022) and Not Being Able to Function Properly at Kino Šiška (2019), and participated in many group exhibitions, such as Plaza Protocol – Deposit at Mala galerija BS (2022), Terminal Drift at MoTA LAB (2022), Open call at the Škuc Gallery (2017) and Community Kit at MAO’s Project Space (2017), among others.
Andrej Škufca (1987) is a visual artist and member of the editorial team of Šum magazine. He has had solo exhibitions at Aksioma, DUM, the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Miroslav Kraljević Gallery in Zagreb, Karlin Studios in Prague among others. His work has also been presented in major international group exhibitions at home and abroad, such as the National Museum of 21st Century Art MAXXI in Rome, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Nitja Oslo, the Metelkova Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, the Art Gallery in Maribor, and last but not least at the 34th Graphic Biennial in Ljubljana (MGLC, 2021).
Slavko Tihec (1928 – 1993) was one of the most important local post-war sculptors and the author of numerous public monuments, such as the Memorial at Osankarica from 1960, the National Liberation Front Memorial in Maribor from 1975 and the Ivan Cankar Memorial in Ljubljana from 1982. He lived and worked in Maribor and Ljubljana. He participated in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, and represented Yugoslav sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and 1980. He received a number of awards and prizes for his work, including the Prešeren Fund Prize in 1967, the Jakopič Prize in 1973 and 1983, and the Prešeren Prize in 1983, the highest award in the field of art in Slovenia.
Neja Zorzut’s artistic practice relates to guidelines of ecology, hyperobject entities, and hyperoccultation, where she builds atmospheric infrastructures in the capitalocene environment. Assembles liminal alterations of disembodied objects of the econocene, or material objectivity, as a response to the accommodation through which the boundary between object and body disappears. She exhibited independently in the Gallery Equrna, the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, and in collaboration with the Maska Institute in Ljubljana. She participated in the 34th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana and a group exhibition in HDLU Zagreb, Kunsthalle Bratislava, and Leipzig. She received the Prešeren Academy of Fine Arts and Design Award and the Jakopič Award for Young Artist 2022.
Neja ZorzutLara Žagar (1993) is a contemporary artist from Ljubljana. She graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering – Department of Fashion Design (2018) and is studying for a Master’s degree at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (2021-) – Department of Video and New Media. She creates long-term projects in which she explores the visual experience of the environment and her relationship to it. She is interested in different approaches to new media art, combining installation , video , photography , light and sound.
Lara ŽagarPlaza Protocol emerged from a defunct construction site of an underground shopping mall on the outskirts of Ljubljana. Since 2020, Plaza allies with artists, designers, architects, writers, and other agents, to reflect on the accelerating economic and ecological processes which shape our planetary scale “shopping ruin”, and imagineer (imagine + engineer) new plots and protocols for a world that comes after it. Plaza grows through opening new portals-areas. Each area is a result of a new alliance/collaboration.
Plaza Protocol