Projects of co-workers
Vesna Bukovec:
There is no society without spectacle
Exhibition: Art critics select, November 2011

November 2–18, 2011
Cankarjev dom, Foyer I (free entrance)
Presentation on Wednesdy, November 2, 2011 at 1 pm

Vesna Bukovec, SCCA-Ljubljana's webmaster is presented in the frame of exhibition cycle Art critics select in November in Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana.

Curator: Jernej Kožar
Artist: Vesna Bukovec
Works: from the series There is no society without spectacle, 2011

Vesna Bukovec, from series There is no society without spectacle; OWS Protests, 2011

How far is near

In the drawing Game Spectators we can see a crowd of people arranged in rows; men wearing T-shirts, women with bare shoulders, some have glasses, others are also wearing hats. Despite being cramped close to one another, they are lonely. Only here and there we see an odd couple, everyone else is either staring into different directions or taking photographs. Judging by their faces, most of the male attendants are perfectly content, for they are a part of a privileged group, interested in sports events. At the edges, the spectators are roughly cut off, a feature that magnifies the effect of breathless anticipation. The grandstands are heaving with people, so the event must be important. There is only one vacant place amongst them.

In today’s visual art we observe a trend of returning to the starting point of visual creation – the drawing. To mention only the most prominent representatives of the movement: Tracy Emin, Dan Perjovschi and David Shrigley. The drawing is, in comparison to other media, facing the world in a way that is friendlier to the observer. Its advantage is it is being considered a classical visual art technique, therefore it can afford to be more radical with the message it is carrying.

In contrast with her previous works, Vesna Bukovec’s cycle of drawings There is no society without spectacle turns from an individual to the mass. She exchanged her previously used continuous and smooth line of drawing without any illusionistic additions for a less fluent, sharper one. In her drawings, based on photographs she found on the internet, are protesters on Wall Street, spectators at Wimbledon, workers waiting to receive the news that they lost their jobs, people queueing to buy an iPhone, rock concert visitors, praying children, people waiting to receive their food parcels. It was the most recent protests against banks in New York and elsewhere that encouraged Vesna Bukovec to think about the psychology of the crowd and the roles of individuals in it. She always uses a photograph for her intentionally schematic drawings, the message of which is by all means shocking and eating into the current reality. Any individual is but a part of the society and their behaviour is always submissive to the group. This is of course a completely normal occurrence, for a human is a social being, a socially defined animal. Subdued to these findings is the style of drawings that is close to the one we recognize from common user manual, or various warning signs and is intentionally impersonal and conformed to the mass.

In these drawings, Vesna Bukovec summarises the current social affairs. She proves that social criticism is not completely void from the personal one. In the first three drawings we can see the luxury of today’s world and in the other three a group of those people who had not had the luck of being born into the world of wealth. One drawing is of a group of children with their arms folded on their chest, a gesture that suggests prayer. Despite the abundance and wealth of the present era, the people are increasingly unhappy nowadays – some of them for not having the latest iPhone, some for not being able to get a ticket for Wimbledon, others for not having food and still others for being unemployed. Part of the reason for all that is definitely religion, which has, in all its forms, supressed people and forced them to conform to the mass for thousands of years.

Text bv Jerner Kožar
English translation: Petra Krajnc Brown

Vesna Bukovec (1977) graduated and completed her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. She works independently and in the art group KOLEKTIVA (with Metka Zupanič and Lada Cerar). Her artistic work finds its expression in a variety of media (video, photography, drawing, installation) and approaches (research, appropriation, participation, etc.).
She presented her work in several solo (Centre and Gallery P74, Ljubljana, 2003 and 2005; Simulaker Gallery, Novo mesto, 2006; Miklova hiša Gallery, Ribnica, 2009; KAPSULA, Ljubljana, 2010; A+A Gallery, Venice, EX-garage, Maribor, 2011) and group exhibitions (25th International Biennial of Graphic Arts, MGLC, Ljubljana, 2003; Territories, Identities, Networks: Slovenian Art 1995–2005, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, 2005; Kunsthaus, Graz, 2006; Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec, 2008; U3 - 6th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana; Where do we go from here?, Secession, Vienna; Minimal Differences, White Box, New York, 2010 etc.).

The projcet Art critics select is organized by Slovenian association of art critics in cooperation with Cankarjev dom.
The exhibition of Vesna Bukovec is coproduced by Kolektiva Institute.

[Published October 29, 2011]