SBD, Bio i nestao 3 (He was and has disappeared 3), modified ready-made, 22 cm x 18 cm, 2021
8 – 29 November 2022
P74 Gallery
You are cordially invited to attend the opening of the exhibition FRAGMENTS, CHIPS, AND RESIDUES by Small but dangers on Tuesday, 8 November 2022, between 7pm and 9pm at the P74 Gallery in Ljubljana.
The exhibition will be on view till 29 November 2022 at the usual opening hours of the Gallery (monday to friday, 12.00 to 18.00, extra viewings upon individual arrangement).
______
he exhibition of the collective Small but dangers, entitled Fragments, Chips, and Residues, is designed around hard-to-recognize fragments of the world (installations, collages, works on paper, ready-made objects, works on canvas) that persist into the future. These are small fragments, chips, and residues of various elements of the social environment, human residues in the real and figurative sense. A special role is awarded to materiality, a role of playful archaeology of everyday life. Mateja Rojc and Simon Hudolin believe that the materials of this world are imprinted with the ideas or contents of those who shape the material. Even when a part of this world breaks off, a trace of the whole remains: »Since we have no power to cut down the giant, we will tickle him until he kneels down. We’re going to mix up his details so he won’t know what came before and what came after. (…) We also understand the latter as fragments of a larger matter that we have stolen for you.«
With their new exhibition, Small but dangers break several rules. As many times before, old works will be exhibited among the new ones. In this way, the artists establish a critical attitude towards the new. From the very beginning, they’ve been engaged in the production of new works, but at the same time they also collect found objects. They occasionally combine both production methods, even to the point of making them unrecognizable. In the present exhibition, they continue to fuse both concepts. But not simply by complementing found objects, framing them or placing them in larger, already made artefacts. They often place the found object on a stand, hang it on the wall as they found it. In a new context (the context of the gallery setting), alongside other works, they become part of the same world. The authors do not choose objects, parts of objects or even buildings chips based on their origin. They are chosen based on incomprehensible aesthetic criteria. Thus, traces of civilization, carriers of stratification and hierarchy (palaces, churches, roads, altars, nails, and screws) are preserved from the past to the present.
The objects chosen by Small but dangers are just small details that’ve broken free (or broken off, torn off, chipped off). These objects are difficult to recognize, so they do not allow us to use them to deal with concrete memories that might be captured in them, but only with memory as such. For them, found objects are like a memory without a clear content. Memory as a form of thinking becomes actualized through inventing emptiness. The form of remembering becomes a mental model for thinking about the present. New ideas and thoughts are formed through thinking as something similar to remembering. Small but dangers understand their products as found objects and treat them as such. Their role is the same in their work. Fragments and chips testify to the fact that what they broke away from is falling apart. This fills Small and dangers with optimism.
______
Small but dangers (SBD) are Simon Hudolin-Salči and Mateja Rojc. In 2004, they graduated from the Collage of Visual Arts in Ljubljana; Simon Hudolin finished his master’s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2015. In 2008, they were nominated for the OHO Group Award. In 2013, they and Matija Brumen received the second prize at the Photography of the Year 2013 competition. SBD were the recipients of the VIG Special Invitation Award as part of the Essl Art Award CEE 2015, and in 2017 Simon Hudolin received the OHO Group Award. SBD has presented its work at numerous solo exhibitions in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Celje, Novi Sad, Ribnica, and Ravne na Koroškem as well as on several international contemporary art fairs in New York, Madrid, Basel, Vienna, and Budapest. They have also participated in numerous group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad, among them Color white graphics: F, R, E, Š., The International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2021); Economy of Nature, P74 Gallery, Ljubljana (2017); Simple, Fun, and Dangerous, Faculty of Fine Arts, Centre for graphic and visual research Akademija, Belgrade, Serbia (2016); VIG Special Invitation, Ringturm, Vienna, Austria (2016); Crises and New Beginnings: Art in Slovenia 2005–2015, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova +MSUM, Ljubljana (2015/16); The Differences 2014, Student Cultural Center – Fabrika, Novi Sad, Serbia (2014); U3 – 7th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia: Resilience, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova +MSUM, Ljubljana (2014); 20 for 15, P74 Gallery, Ljubljana (2012); 255,804 km2, Brot Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria (2011); Postvirtual, P74 Gallery, Ljubljana (2011); U3 – 6th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia: An Idea for Living. Realism and Reality in Contemporary Art in Slovenia, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana (2010).
