Jože Barši, Mladen Dolar, HEGLOVA FENOMENOLOGIJA DUHA 1, 2009-2013
Tomaž Furlan, WEAR V., 2005
26 February – 1 March 2020
Jože Barši, Tomaž Furlan: Under the Surface
P74 Gallery proudly presents a dialogue between two remarkable artists of different generations: the innovative practice of the young Tomaz Furlan and the post-conceptual practice of the middle-generation Joze Barsi. In their work, they both deal with objectness (Barsi: from the deconstruction of the sculptural object in the mid-1990s to a shift to architectural explorations of space and their subsequent expansion into installation), the autonomy of the subject, and individualization. The title Under the Surface implies synonyms such as “basement”, “depths”, “belly”, “ground”, “groundwork”, “pedestal”, “rest”, “substructure”, etc. Tomaz Furlan and Joze Barsi both show a specific interest in the strategies of re-use: Furlan in the construction processes of his “machines” and Barsi in the post-conceptual re-examination process of copying the overlooked and ignored texts of political philosophy and art.
Tomaz Furlan has been creating low-tech, DIY-style sculpture-machines since 2005. Mostly made of rusting metal, recycled objects or bulging wads of polyurethane foam, these diabolical machines or cumbersome prostheses tend to be less than truly functional. Visitors are encouraged to try them out. Resembling a collection of implements from a torture chamber, they range from hand traps to slapping devices and unstable spinning beds. Tomaz Furlan’s still unfolding Wear Series is full of absurd standardized objects and repetitive workplace gestures that he explores in tragicomical manner. They evoke the remnants of a Modernist Utopian world of machines, the sort of future people hoped for in the wake of technological advances in the 1950s and 60s. Through experimental performances and body art Tomaz Furlan treads a highly original path welding impoverished materials into obdurate sculpture-machines and animating them with his own brand of bitterly dark burlesque humour. Tomaz Furlan has participated in numerous exhibitions localy and and internationaly.
Work of Joze Barsi comprise the use value of an artwork, its social and relational value, to more conceptual practices, such as walking, sound, conversations, readings, and registers of knowledge. More recently Barsi has focused most of his interest on forgotten or ignored texts of political philosophy and art. The copies of texts (whole books, chapters, or shorter texts) appear not only as an art form but as content that Barši analyses and then presents to the public. Joze Barsi’s work has been featured at the Istanbul Biennial (1995), the Venice Biennial (1997) and at numerous other international and Slovenian exhibitions. Joze Barsi is a full-time professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana.
P74 Gallery at ARCOmadrid 2020
Booth: 9G03, Hall 9
ARCOmadrid
IFEMA – Feria de Madrid
Apdo. de Correos 67.067
28042 Madrid
SPAIN