Jernej
Kožar
The Palace at
ROMAN MAKŠE
In his sculptures, installations and environments,
Roman Makše displays typical features of contemporary
styles of dwelling. The format of these sculptures, which recalls the similar
format of contemporary homes, is a constant in Makše’s
work. These sculptures do not hide their ambivalence. On the one hand, they
tell a clear and linear story; on the other, however, Makše
uses all these tiny details in an aesthetic way, as well, merely as
compositional elements in which we can detect echoes of the most influential
style of the twentieth century, namely, minimalism. The window blinds, handles
and knobs, the wooden flooring, the carpet runner, and the cushioned furniture,
among other things, work together in the sculpture on at least three levels.
First, as an art medium, whereby the artist establishes a pure
three-dimensional form, they demarcate the boundary between outside and inside.
Then, as signs by means of which the viewer projects his associations onto the
surface of the sculpture, they produce a representation of familiar objects.
And finally, as readymades, they simply are what they
are. The interweaving of these semiotic functions gives the sculpture its
peculiar dynamic and ironic distance.
Makše’s sculptures are neither real functional objects nor
clear representations. They are everyday objects with representational elements
added. There is no exact correspondence between signifier and signified or
referent; rather, the production of meaning takes place within a system of
other signs. The relation between signifier and signified is arbitrary. It
functions on a number levels and is continually opening up new interpretations;
meanwhile, the viewer projects his subconscious onto the given form. Since, for
each of us, the subconscious is subordinate to our own experiences,
it is therefore entirely individual, linked only to certain constants, which we
know as social taboos. The metaphorical connections to the object prompt the
viewer’s subconscious projections and invite him to summon into consciousness
an internalized fantastic story previously unknown to him.
DRAGICA ČADEŽ
The work of Dragica Čadež is based on similar aesthetic principles as that of Makše. Her sculptures, too, stand on the floor and extend
into the space that surrounds them, which makes their physical presence more
emphatic. As a result, we see the sculpture as a real object, with its own abstract
identity, rather than as an image or representation of something.
Čadež arranges planes and lines in vertical and horizontal
positions so as to create various rhythms and configurations. The work has no
permanent visual identity and no center of identification. It develops and
expands into the viewer’s space in a way that makes its appearance change
depending on the point from which it is viewed. The artist uses color to
connect individual elements, thus creating a sculpture where the individual components
function like notes in a musical composition.
Dragica Čadež comes from the
neo-constructivist tradition of the third quarter of the twentieth century. The
structure of the work is always apparent; we are able to follow the sculpture’s
logic, first, at the time of its creation and, then, even more importantly, in
the development of the form in concrete space. The boards from which these
works are made preserve their natural forms, forms that Čadež
in some places emphasizes and in other places conceals, though their origin in
nature is never hidden. For this reason, associations with forests and trees
are not unusual. Čadež, of course, blurs such direct
associations, sometimes through her use of color or through the composition of
the individual parts, which, as we said, comes from the modernist tradition.
Like Makše, Čadež also
makes her sculptures by putting things together; with Čadež,
however, these compositions are subordinated solely to aesthetic demands. Here
the story is of secondary importance. Although it never completely vanishes and
Čadež makes no attempt to avoid it, still, she never
lets the story come to the fore. Her sculptures, as well, have come down from
the pedestal of a different reality and entered the space of the viewer, where
they speak to him directly.
JIRI BEZLAJ
Bezlaj’s sculptures are made from the traditional sculptural
material of marble, which raises them into the sphere of classical art.
Nevertheless, today they function on symbolically, and
perhaps even ironically in our consumerist world dominated by replaceable
objects. The intimate stone shapes remind us of flowers, ornaments, organic
forms, parts of the body, torsos — and this transforms the installation of Bezlaj’s sculptures into a kind of lapidary gallery, that
is, a collection of diverse sculpture fragments not necessarily all belonging
to the same period. Of course, Bezlaj’s installation
is hardly chaotic. On the contrary, this is an intelligently organized whole
that follows certain artistic principles and viewing strategies. The smooth,
polished surface of the stone triggers in us an ambivalent response, especially
when, in the stone mass, we recognize part of a body that seems to be meant for
touching, for the erotic, but which is in this case only for viewing and
observation. A special element in the installation of these sculptures is the sand on which unworked pieces of
stone have been arranged, serving, as it were, as a pedestal, which shifts the
narrative back into the sphere of art history.
From blocks of stone Bezlaj
shapes organic forms — upright sculptures, which at the top usually turn into a
flower, a bud, or a stylized rosette. In other places, the stone might remain
rough, so that what we see in front of us is always, to some degree, an
unfinished work, a torso.
Bezlaj builds on ideas of growth and transformation as a
double metaphor. The inorganic material of the marble has been permeated from
within by an animating force. At the same time, this vessel of metaphor is
permeated by a current that transforms it from rigid lifeless matter into
organic tissue. It endows it with a kind of unstable and mobile surface that
lives its own life, divorced from the benumbed core. These sculptures are
petrified organic forms, frozen in time, and they project illusion through
time-limited organic change. Bezlaj’s concept of
sculpture is directed toward the viewer’s sense of touch as an instinctive and
sensate extension of his capacity for thought. Bezlaj’s
work is thus linked with the modernist tradition of vitalist
sculpture, initiated by Jean Arp and then continued
by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.