Junoš Miklavc and the collective By the Golden Thigh: Meditation

The path of artistic exploration was turned for Junoš Miklavc already in mid 1980s by monastic Buddhist life and meditation – when the internal cleansing process was made the basis through which colours and compositions gradually come to life in their unusual values and combinations. The world awakens in its reflections, in blurred images, in the eternal movement and the awareness of transience.

“By meditation, the artist gains concentration and abolishes thinking. In a creative process, the reason works on three levels: based on experience, feelings and thinking. Requiring only experience and feelings, the reason pushes thinking aside. It even selects the experience from among the experience storage tank itself; it is not us who select. Thinking organises things into concepts, and the reason does not need that, it only takes an experience that we no longer remember, that has been forgotten. As the artist is dealing with a difficult material, be it carving wood or using greasy egg tempera that blocks the brush, they need to use much power to make a cut or spread the colour across the canvas with a brush. The subconscious sets to work, the reason extracts from the storage tank, the artist has no time to think, and it is then that good things might be created,” explains Junoš Miklavc. Graphic art and egg tempera enable Miklavc to have a perfect creative process based on physical strain. He sets about painting without an advance idea, concept or drawing. The story emerges by itself, often being incomprehensible, yet creating certain suspense that works on the painting.

He is interested in the activity that actually yet has to happen. Through the painting, the reason finds the answer in advance. At the same time, the author is interested in colour, transparency and layers, therefore he uses egg tempera – acrylic colours, being too unambiguous and hollow, are not sufficient. Getting to know the painting materials and making the preparations are of key importance within the creative process. The material is to be rubbed, mixed, changed and never repeated – neither corrected – and that is the core of the creative process. Paper and a pencil or a brush, this is the direct confrontation with the emptiness of space. The more there are mediators between the hand and the work of art, the more the creative process is distant.

The paintings by Junoš Miklavc are marked by tangible layering, attention, meaning and origin of the material in painting taking him to spiritual worlds. The body has the role of conducting energies. The perception of the outside world travels through the body like a sensation, being translated into the drawing and colours and its subtle shades. Miklavc is a refined explorer into relations and shades of colour. The figure is positioned into the spiritual space of colour with precise feeling of a thousand-fold experience – yet never really repeated.

By the Golden Thigh collective argue the point that everything we do focused is meditation. With their project By the Golden Thigh, the art trio Katja Skušek, Nataša Skušek and Mladen Stropnik explore in a gourmet manner the dimensions of nourishment, particularly the obsessions to do with food. This topic is the main theme of their joint activity. The independent curator Maja Škerbot who also wrote the text displayed at the place setting within the project By the Golden Thigh, has contemplated the obsessions of individuals in the contemporary society and their activity, noting: “So far, their space has not been pervaded by Klein's fragrances, yet the eroticism of the obsessive has been flourishing in authors' statements, providing the visitor with yet another ingenuity on the freely obsessive that only acts so legitimately and without mincing matters in the field of art.” Otherwise independently creative artists have for a number of years been attracting attention, particularly in joint projects, with pieces having the common denominator in food and their completely subjective attitudes towards it.

Junos_Miklavc.pdf
CV_Miklavc.pdf

18 February 2011 – 2 March 2011
Opening: 18 February 2011 at 8 pm
Kibela / KIBLA Maribor

KiBela Gallery is open every day 9.00 am to 10.00 pm, Saturdays 4.00 pm to 10.00 pm, and closed Sundays.
 MMC KIBLA wishes to thank the following for their support: EU-EACEA, Culture Programme, Brussels, Slovenian Ministry of Culture, Municipality of Maribor and Office of Youth.
 KiBela programme is part of the European X-OP project.