Nataša Kos: BLURRED

Nataša Kos: BLURRED
4 July–3 August 2024
artKIT

We cordially invite you to the opening of the photo exhibition BLURRED by Nataša Kos, which will take place on Thursday, 4 July 2024, at 7 p.m. in the artKIT exhibition space.

Since the Multimedia Center KIBLA was founded exactly 28 years ago to the day, on July 4, 1996, we would also like to invite you to a social gathering to celebrate this modest anniversary.

INVITATION (PDF)
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION (PDF)

The photo series BLURRED is the working title of the series Boredom from the Sofa (ongoing), which thematizes the television screen, which, however, is not “the window to the world” but, on the contrary, the window of the world into one’s own home, through which various apparitions and ominous shadows can enter.

Apart from the images of the author herself, these images are also the only images of a human being or a person who resembles a human being. However, they are not real images, but dematerialized reflections of visitors from imaginary and universal nightmares. They are as blurry as if you were looking at them through thick glass. These foggy and blurry images are defined by both the TV screen and the false window. Conversely, we can understand this window as an electronic eye that voyeuristically peers into and manipulates one's own world. This eye is at the same time a trap that attracts the viewer’s eye, numbs it, hypnotizes the viewer’s mind and thus lures him into a lethargic torpor.

Francisco Goya called one of his etchings The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. The sleep of reason leads to boredom and boredom produces monsters, which in these photographs are more or less formless entities. They speak of the meaninglessness of any kind of real communication and connection between people, which is replaced by the dependence and addiction of people who slump on the sofa, disinterested and paralyzed, willingly absorbing what is served to them on the television screen. The foggy contours of the figures wander through a strikingly claustrophobic world created by the images themselves. And into this suffocating cage, from which there is no escape, they also draw in the viewer, whose eye becomes a convex mirror that reflects nothing other than human fear.

Biography

The photographer Nataša Kos (1971, Murska Sobota) began taking photographs rather by chance in 2012. She participates with her photos in photo competitions at home and abroad and exhibits at the invitation of galleries in Slovenia and abroad. Her work revolves around what is hidden behind everyday things. By analyzing and interpreting them, the everyday in her photos becomes something very special. What emerges, however, is nothing peaceful, as her work is a very personal and original metaphor for human loneliness and isolation, additionally captured in the tragic frames of home and leisure. She does not sugarcoat things, nor does she document them. She speaks with the artistic language of loneliness and perhaps even morbidity, but the meaning of her photographic language is not the same as the language itself. In fact, the very purpose of this language has an important semantic twist: the meaning of the photographs is what is ultimately not directly found in her photographs, and that is an affirmation of life and interpersonal communication.
In April 2016, she was featured in one of the world's leading magazines in the field of photography, Digital Camera (for the UK) and Digital Camera World (US edition), with a photo series titled What Is Wrong Girl? Her photos have also been published in other magazines and newspapers: Friendly Magazine NTWK, JULIET art magazine (Italy), Delo newspaper and in several online photo magazines, and they are also published in various brochures and leaflets. She lives and works in Murska Sobota.

< Nataša Kos: Untitled, 2019

artKIT, Glavni trg 14, Maribor
Opening hours: from Tuesday to Friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m