Bogdan Čobal: Pools of Cores 1992–2022

Bogdan Čobal: Pools of Cores 1992–2022
20 May–18 June 2022
MMC KIBLA / KiBela

You are welcome to join us for the opening of Bogdan Čobal's solo painting exhibition entitled Pools of Cores 1992–2022, which will be on Friday, 20 May 2022 at 7 p.m. at KiBela.

INVITATION (PDF)
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION (PDF)

Čobal's works from the series In The Pools of Cores are, at first glance, masterpieces of art. Immersing in their mysterious pools of colors and shapes in seemingly abstract motifs surprises us. The artist allows us to see the body interior through the body of the image or movement on the screen. Both ways pull us into eruption, into the eruptions of volcanoes that happen around us and within us. He visualized that invisible world with which the human body must live in symbiosis because otherwise, we would not survive. A group of single-celled microscopic living organisms, such as bacteria with a simple cellular structure and without a cellular core, live in the soil, water, air, and all living beings' bodies. The human organism consists of as many as ninety percent of microorganisms... When the painter thinks about it, he presents us with an exceptional experience; the colors sound and pulse in their materiality and the images elude us. They can be entered in the immersive way; in one instance, this experience is pleasant for us; again, on the other hand, it is difficult and depressing. We're engulfed in a whirlwind; we're losing consciousness. We feel trapped instead of feeling freedom, the sensation so familiar when we're powerless. We understand that we are part of this complex ecosystem. (author of the text Milena Zlatar)

Bogdan Čobal was born in 1942 in Zrenjanin (Serbia), where the Nazis expelled his free-thinking family. They were, like so many compatriots, emigrants and refugees. After the war, they returned home to Maribor. The family was connected to the intellectual elite of the city, so the parents supported the decisions of the children, including the youngest son, who decided to be a painter like his older brother Ivan. After studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, graduating in 1967, he dedicated his creative decades to Maribor as a critical intellectual: an excellent painter, a dedicated pedagogue (ten years as an assistant professor and associate professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Maribor) and a professional activist. Glazer's award of the city of Maribor for an exhibition at the Art Gallery in 2002 and later the Grand Glazer Award testify to his undoubted contribution. Through his exhibitions, he addressed art audiences across the country and abroad, almost all over Europe; he has also been awarded several times. He lives and creates in Maribor.

Admission is free.

< Bogdan Čobal, Return to Core 7, 1992, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 200 cm.

MMC KIBLA / KiBela, Ulica kneza Koclja 9, Maribor
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.