Beno Artnak, Painting's Dream / Sen slike

“The process of creating a painting goes on until the painting is nished, which is when the artist leaves his/her nal trace on the work. Before that, however, it has gone through a process of progress and change. With each layer of color, and with each break the artist takes, the painting is given an unrepeatable moment of existence, sometimes brief (a mere moment), and sometimes long (like eternity). But with the next layer of color that moment is gone. The painting changes and now lives in a di erent moment. Sure, it continues to exist. In every stroke. All the way to the end. A painting has a soul, and the soul dreams.”

ABOUT EXHIBITION (PDF)

Painting’s Dream is about intuitive images, it wishes to simulate the hemispheric beta-condition of sleep, i.e., what we imagine, what we desire, and what is un-real. Un-realistic, in the sense that it is created beyond the conscious, if we believe Freud, or molded into the collective unconscious, according to Jung. What links the two theories together is the simple fact that the images from Artnak’s cycle Sen slike (Painting’s Dream) are not based on reality. There is no look to disclose them, because they only exist for the single reason of being hidden in the artist’s individuality.

The artist accentuates the idea that the painting has existed, as it were, “since forever”: that from the moment of placing the canvas on the easel, it is just a “work in progress”. From the original idea onwards, the depiction is in fact but a sum of inspirational moments, progressing through individual, inextricably linked stages.
The artist is the one to determine when the painting is “ nished”, thereby announcing its march towards conquering the observer’s view. Each painting carries a proper connotative content, which is important for its own progress, as much as for the artist’s. The observer may not be able to see this, but can perhaps sense it on a di erent level.

Beno Artnak draws his inspiration as a painter mostly from the energy of the young cultural turmoil of the 1908s and 1990s, while his artistic driving force remains in the desire for a comeback and re-emancipation of gure in the contemporary visual arts realm. With a seeming carelessness of the painting stroke, and a deceiving lightness of composition, he achieves a persuasive synergy in his depictions, which enables his portraits to breathe in the face of the observer, and, more importantly, down his neck.
– Nina Jeza

Beno Artnak, Sen slike / Painting’s Dream
Friday, 6 October 2017, at 6 p. m. – exhibition opening Saturday,
7 October 2017, at 10 a. m. – breakfast with the artist

The exhibition will be showing until 28 October 2017.

artKIT Gallery, Glavni trg 14, Maribor
Tue–Fri 10 a. m.–1 p. m. and 5 p. m.–7 p. m., Sat 10 a. m.–1 p. m.

ACE KIBLA is co-funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Maribor. Project RISK CHANGE (2016–2020) is co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.