uvslike

Melodies of Hope

2009-11-05T13:32:00.000-08:00

Irreversible 1

Irreversible 2

Irreversible 3

Irreversible 4

Irreversible 5

Irreversible 6

Irreversible 7

Irreversible 8

Irreversible 9

Irreversible 10

Melodies of Hope 1, 40x40cm

Melodies of Hope 2, 40x40cm

Melodies of Hope 3, 40x40cm

Melodies of Hope 4, 40x40cm

Melodies of Hope 5, 40x40cm

Melodies of Hope 6, 40x40cm

Melodies of Hope 8, 40x40cm

The Heritage of Prometeus, 80x160cm

URŠA VIDIC: MELODIES OF HOPE

Ganes Pratt Gallery, Ljubljana / May 2009

Melodies of hope is an art exhibition that shows more than just painting techniques. In the Irreversible series, the art piece is a photo montage which uses existing art works for its key motifs. Urša Vidic combines non-painting medium with a distinctively subjective, painting attitude towards the image and the subject that lies within her. She reaches into art history and uses a series of paintings by Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder for her new work.

Two layers of images trapped into a twinkling surface of Plexiglas demonstrate how the past enabled the present. Urša Vidic erased the human figures from the paintings which were the first in the western art of the modern times portraying every day life in the village. The society which was increasingly dependant on trade, but at that point still had a strong sense of community, already carries within the beginnings which lead to the irreversible loneliness of the modern subject.

In the intimate painting cycle Melodies of Hope carrying the name of the whole exhibition, the artist also goes into history, this time deeper, to the ancient mythology. Prometheus livers, which are being pecked in eternity by an eagle as a punishment for stealing the fire, are in Urša's paintings transformed into a heart. Anatomic figure of the heart is melted into a treetop nested by the birds. Despite their beauty, colorful songbirds carry a sinister aura and reveal human pain. In the part of the cycle where brighter colors prevail, the heart is mutilated, wounded or captured in the moment of explosion. As in previous paintings, the artist plays with passing of an abstract stain into an image, limiting the sculpting from the painting.

The transition of the ancient elements into present is complemented by a video which can be comprehended as a dynamic painting stemming from her opus. The projection is captured in a box which also functions as a frame of the image. The box alludes to the one from which Pandora released diseases, difficulties, sorrows and hatred into the world. The captured light with sounds and moves – the choreography and performance was trusted to Leja Jurešič – shows the viewer that which remained captured in another, lost time.

tekst:Petja Grafenauer, translation: Nina Vidrih

As One

2008-04-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Video: As One
Concept: Urša Vidic
Photography: Lorenka Stropnik
Animation: Aron
Editing: Aron, Lorenka Stropnik, Urša Vidic
Music: Luka Prinčič

The video As One is based on X tension series of paintings portraiting an imaginary body in a different media. The sensory effect that we perceive through the eye of the camera is floating above an unknown, alien landscape. The moving of the camera takes us from the abstract, undefined spaces into more detailed points, where we see the fragments of the human bodies. The interlacement of the bodies is preventing the eye from seeing where one body ends and another starts. The video itself is a loop with no conceivable time span, which repeatedly brings attention to the same points of perception, leaving the viewer lost in space and time.

The effect of merging many bodies into one confronts us with monstrous Other which is not our own body, but belongs to us at the same time. The bodies merged into one, give us the sensation of disintegration and loss of entireness, taking away the foundations of our subject and its physical placement in the real world.The loss of reference point shifts us into the loss of our own subjectivity. It marks the death of the unique and the birth of something alien, monstrous, distorted. The video is an illusory manifestation of a modern man, a monster man caught up in the futuristic science fiction.In it, we can recognize the horror of the present and the future, where the unique, free subject is dissolving under the influence of globalization, capitalism, politics and science.We are all caught up in a global net of the same intentions, desires and goals. The subjectivity of an individual has become a prisoner of numerous subjectivities performing as one. But instead of being the liberating wholeness, it turns out to be monstrous dehumanization, disappearance.

x tension

2008-02-14T15:06:00.001-08:00

tension 7, oil on canvas, 25x30cm, 2008

tension 6, oil on canvas, 25x30cm, 2008

tension 5, oil on canvas, 35x50cm, 2008

tension 4, oil on canvas, 60x70cm, 2008

tension 3, oil on canvas, 60x70cm, 2008

tension 2, oil on canvas, 60x70cm, 2008

tension 1, oil on canvas, 60x70, 2008

x tension 3, oil on canvas, 70x180cm, 2008

x tension 2, oil on canvas, 70x180cm, 2008

x tension 1, oil on canvas, 70x180cm, 2008

on the other side

2008-02-14T14:53:00.001-08:00

Ambivalence, oil on canvas, 62x72cm, 2006

Denial, oil on canvas, 52x47cm, 2006

No mans land, oil on canvas, 47x62cm, 2006

Shame, oil on canvas, 52x47cm, 2006

Happy together 2, oil on canvas, 62x82cm, 2006

Happy together, oil on canvas, 62x82cm, 2006

the screaming ones

2008-02-14T14:37:00.001-08:00

True fake, oil on canvas, 130x140cm, 2006

True fake II, oil on canvas, 140x150cm, 2006

To scream away your demons, oil on canvas, 140x150cm, 2006

The chosen one, oil on canvas, 160x180, 2006

Pain thing, oil on canvas, 160x180, 2006

old lyrics

2008-02-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

Wrong beauty, oil on canvas, 160x180cm, 2005

Wo(a)rm in my heart, oil on canvas, 120x150cm, 2005

Paint me over, oil on canvas, 120x150cm, 2005

Ssenkcis, oil on canvas, 130x150cm, 2005