VELI AND AMOS LIVE IN GALLERIES

VELI AND AMOS LIVE IN GALLERIES / VELI IN AMOS V ŽIVO V GALERIJAH is the Slovenian premiere of the solo gallery installation of the Slovenian artist Veli Silver and the Swiss artist Amos Angeles.

It was the summer of 2010 and until one of the paragraphs below, i.e. until “the winter of 2011”, the lines below unfolded and with regard to them they claimed only to be able to use them in 20 years. To answer with a quote that they/we have been repeating from the cult movie “Style Wars”, or all-together now: “just follow the outline“.

Where to begin? On the artist Veli Silver and the creator Amos Angeles, two painters and filmmakers, directors and documentarists, or the logics of external, urban and street interventions moved into the context of a gallery space, on the simple and more complex interactivity, on innovative painting and on mural drawings, or the audio scenery and documentary photography, on easiness, simplicity and directness of contemporary art or the complexity of life, and on critical discourse, on a certain joke and on crying as well as studio39+ or on anti-all at once? Where to begin and how to find the number that, being the answer to the essential question, drives him, them, everything? What is the engine and what is it like, and how are these things, stories, concepts propelled?

How to categorize, archive and define the creative volcano that, with the sign on fire, would be thinking of space-specific 3D writing, of transience, of fire, passion and destruction? Of global warming, spectacle, speech slang, of people, of life and of death? Of nature and of being a star for 5 minutes?

They say that their openings are usually attended by ex girlfriends and that it is cool to have somebody else there to entertain them, and they are interested in the iconography and the worship of it. The system is being considered that fights against graffiti and the challenge being posed is the visual spectacle as such. It is being prepared, objects are being constructed, mobile objects that enter galleries and exit them.

And, yes. It is being lived and worked with the street, on the street. Literally. It might be set on it, beside it, therefore the street might be observed, might be explored anthropologically and sociologically, and analysed artistically. Once we debated on spontaneity, which is getting lost in the increasing number of conceptualisations-contextualisations and entrapments in art history and theory.

The fact is that one might go into intoxicating delirium and ecstasy. That it might be worked too much and too little at once, that it might be reduced or might not be reduced. The volcano that has been holding a mirror to the complete urban creativity (too) often, and the anti-volcano that has looked the opposite, i.e. different system of life in the eye. The actual one side and the other, for and against, to pay or to steal, to be outside or to linger with the tattooed crowd of outcasts.

And, naturally, the wall between the two poles. The wall featuring the long and blue line throughout its history. The wall that is a surface and at the same time a complex synthesis. The wall featuring group submarines, connecting trains and exposed genitals in your face. The wall that separates and connects, the wall that visualises and dreams the inverse, and represents the mode of current, i.e. modern living with a shotgun. The mode of life of a generation taken from a context where there is no room for polished rhetoric or political correctness, neither for misunderstanding the rites of contemplation, rather, featuring a confused intertwining and clear connection of the East and the West coast, of thesis and antithesis, of intellectual conceptualisation and the hooligan spontaneity.

And my question to them and to the institution that breeds its conventional rituals: “Why is such a systemic text needed at all, why such a traditional form, actually a conformist act of a kind?”

When trying to understand how the thoughts of the system fighting against graffiti, i.e. when trying naively to find the answer on alternatives and being different, or, actually, even on otherness, there are no and should be no actual plunges into what the pragmatic mass are doing. In accordance with what the eli-mos style of life and method of survival as well as their artworks communicate to me, the mediocrity of systemic (i.e. contemporary) art and its mode of operation are out of the question, but still ... Still, this is the only way to think the art and the system, to process, define and redefine them: art objects such as “jewbox”, “little sheep”, “new york”, “the indian and the wolf”, “hollywood”, “tiger woods” and “safari” as well as the orange series and some documentary photographs screaming for nomadic wanderings from gallery to gallery, from look to look, from soul to soul.

And now it is winter 2011: an interview, me and Veli and Amos. Trying to do a long interview, a complex one, a philosophical one, on the other hand starting just a speedy dialog, a fast talk with short questions and quick answers, with as many questions as possible and as quickly as possible. So. Let's try the second version and think / don't think. Just answer and we see where we go next. Thanks, Veli and Amos, let's go, and yes, let's do it in english and yes, welcome to kibla-org.

The answers to the following questions will be published soon. See you all aka to begin: Street? Gallery? Trains? Whole cars? Canvas? Drawing? Painting? Line? Outline? Artist? Producer? Curator? Theory? Art school aka fine arts academy? Education? Bureaucracy? Filling up papers? System? Police? Men? Woman? Technology? Graffiti? Blu? Banksy? Henry? West bank wall? Rap? Music? Musical genres? Colours? Style wars? Style wars 2? Street domination? Out of control? Für immer? Bellevue boys? Forever and how high? Veli and Amos live in galleries?

miha(son:DA)

more: www.velisilver.com; contact: amos.angeles@gmail.com

8 February 2011 – 16 February 2011
Opening: 8 February 2011 at 8 pm
KiBela / KIBLA Maribor

Guided tour 10-2-2011 at 10:30 and 17:00

Public debate "let's draw all over Maribor – 2" 14-2-2011 at 17:00

Kindly welcome. Admission free.

KiBela 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.