Digitanalog / Art Fair Nesvrstani 7 (Non-Aligned 7)

Digitanalog / Art Fair Nesvrstani 7 (Non-Aligned 7)
14–16 June 2024
Nesvrstani 7 (Non-Aligned 7) – Boutique Art Fair: Everything is bursting with art
Lauba – House for People and Art, Prilaz baruna Filipovića 23a, Zagreb

We are pleased to announce the fourth participation in the boutique art fair of independent galleries Nesvrstani (Non-Aligned) at Lauba House for People and Art in Zagreb, Croatia, which will happen this year from 14 June to 16 June 2024 entitled Everything is bursting with art. In our pavilion, the artworks of Boštjan Drinovec, Tadej Droljc, Aleksij Kobal and Marko Jakše will be on display in the dialogue of paintings, prints, sculptures, video and intermedia installations.

After three years of exhibiting traditional media, painting, drawing and sculpture, we have expanded the media landscape with kinetic objects and moving images, next to static art forms we place dynamic media, classical images created from computer printing, next to oil on canvas is a generative audiovisual image in constant change, we connect the analog and material with the digital and electronic, we combine the natural with the technological, we establish artistic environments with works of art, and we understand all the variety of media with which we live and work as a coexistence of all of us and what surrounds us and what we use regularly or often.

Boštjan Drinovec originates from the complex relationship of modern man to nature. On the one hand, we fence ourselves off from it with walls, multi-layered windows and cleanliness, but on the other hand, we miss it and fill this lost connection by furnishing the home with natural materials, indoor plants... Indoor plants have found a new life niche in our homes, but first of all they had to meet many requirements: these are a pleasant appearance, resistance to pests, dust and forgetfulness when watering, etc. Drinovec has developed a number of indoor »plant« facilities, which, together with achieving and exceeding the stated criteria, are »anthropocized« using materials, forms and aesthetics derived from human development and culture, e.g. furniture and laboratory constructions, a »Duchamp« bottle rack, Starck's lemon squeezer, samples from the 70s of the last century as an Artificial Paradise. Next to them, he places a mobile object, a proto-meteorological station, an indicator of the direction and strength of the wind, the operation of which is illustrated with a video of a series of different kinetic sculptures of this type, which he recorded in nature and which would belong to a real weather observatory.

Art and science, research and experimentation, creativity and utility meet. A similar logic is continued by Tadej Droljc, whose generative audiovisual painting Self-portrait is constantly drawn. The audiovisual brush is led live in front of the audience by pseudo-random algorithms, but yet it seems the artist does not appear to be present. The image is constantly created and provides a framework through which time flows. Time does not flow into the past yet accumulates in memory – this eternal present, where an endless game of perspectives occurs. »Self-portrait represents my perception of myself, which is a synthesis of various influences and experiences processed in suspicious circumstances of memory. This conglomerate is malleable and heterogeneous, and it is held together only by a poetic gap in which memories cross-float or just awkwardly stand next to each other. For example, my experience of spirituality, where I was reborn from the denial of my own infinity through the narrow frame of a limited self, meets with the materialism of neuroscience, reducing this exact nirvana experience to the banal fireworks of neurons. These fireworks display, which looks like a chaotic avalanche in the sky under a microscope, should also be managed by my reason - 'reason is 98 % unconscious' (Lakoff, 2013). The turbulent forces of my unconsciousness that also reside somewhere in the sky and often make fun of the consciousness of someone of ‘me’ agree to that ... Given that we are all made of stars, all of this doesn't even surprise me.«

Aleksij Kobal's paintings, primed canvases as computer monotypes for starting points, to which he adds acrylic and oil, are a combination of a digital base and an analog superstructure, can also simplify the process of preparing an artistic surface, appear as personified objects created in an automated process, design in a program for 3D-animation, to which only the personal interventions of the artist and his brush and paint breathe life, give character, illuminate the content and achieve hypnotic effects. The technical process from the computer »model« to the print is complemented by painterly interventions, which grow from a computer monotype into a picture, the grid structure in the base seems like a bait that is caught by the moment and captures the idea of the author in the primacy of the work of art in all its duality and contrast and carelessness also the contradictions between the orthogonality, sharpness, limitedness of the background and the organicity, openness, softness of the foreground. With the inherent dynamics of relationships, a dialogue is established between media, between classical and modern, between mouse and brush, between computer algorithms and human authorship, between machine and emotion, between programming and idea, between impression and expression. Procedures are repeated, actions become routines, technology is (can be) a tool, reality also consists of appearances, illusions and dreams, the coldness of machines is not only brutal, but can also be understood as a parable of development and life, people and the entire environment, the world and the universe, in which we constantly search and sometimes find the dimension of space-time for the (self-)realization of our meaning through experiment as the meaning of creation.

Marko Jakše is a walker, cyclist and traveler between extremes. A viewer of depths and a recorder of widths, a reader of nature and an imprinter of worlds, a seeker of essences and a sketcher of the limitless, a writer and painter of imaginations and external environments, a renderer of the real and a seeker of dreams, a changer of the apparent into the tangible.
His »paintings span a dramatic arc of empathy for every earthly being, through a critique of the collective evil of the Anthropocene to the perception of the global imbalance of four fundamental elements: fires, dirty rising waters, depleted earth, and extreme air shocks, where very soon, only an islet of earthly paradise will be left. Marko Jakše vigilantly and sensitively translates individual, and collective fear into visual images tells beautiful and frightening stories with light in landscapes of calm and eerie epic dimensions and contrasting color compositions in dominant figures tied in disharmonious knots.
What is the thing that tames us and lies within us, squeezes from the inside out and the outside in? Grisly damaged nature is rapidly devouring our living space, and global pandemic measures have strongly undermined freedom; this essential value clung into this double grip. Responsive dialogue with the only existing entities here and now is the virtue of Marko Jakše. He is not yet a fugitive from the inevitable, and in the studio, he struggles with difficult to tame and uncontrollable opposites ...« (A. K.)

We kindly invite you to visit us in Lauba and get to know the Boutique Art Fair, which with its richest program so far, a relevant selection of art and a suitable atmosphere is again at the top of the list of art events that must be visited in Croatia this year. Inspired by Ivan Kožarić's cheerful spirit and the series of graphics »Everything is bursting with love«, unranked move forward under the slogan »Everything is bursting with art«!
Non-Aligned 7 heralds an impressive number of independent, domestic and international galleries and independent artists. If we add up the art works of 16 independent galleries from China, Slovenia, Croatia and Austria, as well as 12 independent artists, the works of more than 100 artists are exhibited. The best of them are awarded with the »Black Tree of Lauba« award.
The fair is also accompanied by a varied musical program – on Friday, Non-Aligned 7 are opened by the band Ljetno kino, and on the second day of the fair, the big band Fighting Fish performs. Both days, after the bands, DJ Pezo entertains until late at night.

– Peter Tomaž Dobrila

More:
https://www.lauba.hr/
https://www.nesvrstani.hr/nesvrstani-7/

Biographies

Boštjan Drinovec (*1973, Ljubljana) is an academic sculptor and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree. He has been teaching sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana since 2008. He is involved in the Metelkova mesto Autonomous Cultural Zone project and is largely responsible for its visual identity. He is active in the fields of small sculpture (Small Rebels, Lego Thinker …), gallery set-ups (Tree Particle, Dance of Wind, Fortyeighttimesaroundtheworld, Endless World, Light Station …), kinetic (Moebius Strip, Cacophonic Generator) and sound installations (Kymatikon, Retrophony, Sonic Station – in collaboration with Primož Oberžan) and has created sculptures in public spaces.

More: http://www2.arnes.si/~bdrino/

Tadej Droljc is a Slovenian intermedia artist and creative programmer who works at the intersection of sound, image and light. Tadej has received the Lumen Prize Student Award for his solo work, the Dennis Smalley scholarship for electroacoustic music and the Most Promising Video Artist Award at the Madatac festival. His audiovisual research at the CeReNeM Centre for New Music Research won the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award, his Synspecies project won the Edigma Semibreve Award and was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize. Tadej has performed and exhibited at festivals such as Paris Biennale NEMO, Ars Electronica, L. E.V. Festival, Brighton Digital Festival, Semibreve, Lunchmeat, Node, Sonica Glasgow, etc. As part of his collaboration with Ars Electronica’s Futurelab department on the Immersify project, his work has been presented at events such as the Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes, Inter BEE Tokyo or IBC Amsterdam.

More: https://vimeo.com/tadejdroljc

Aleksij Kobal, born on October 23, 1962 in Koper, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana under Professor Janez Bernik in 1986 and postgraduated in 1993 under professor Metka Krašovec. He participated in many group exhibitions and organized several solo exhibitions, among them the most popular: Starless – the story of Prešnica, Providence, Wounds of Time, Wedding of the Centuries, Forbidden City and Nocturno. Between 2004 and 2008 joined experimental musical group The Stroj. In 2009, he published his first book, »Glas«, with Cankarjeva založba publishing house. This was followed in 2022 by his second novel, »Topologija zlatoroga«, released with Sanje Publishing.
He has received several recognitions and awards for his artistic activities, including the »Prešernov sklad« award in 2016. He lives and works in Ljubljana as a freelance artist.

More: https://www.aleksij-kobal.com/

Marko Jakše was born 1959 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1987. In 1993 he moved from the town to the country: he lives and works as a freelance artist in the hamlet of Mohorje, Slovenia. Jakše’s debut in Maribor took place in 1996 in Pekarna and at the Maribor Art Gallery (UGM). Two years later, his exhibition Nojeva barka / The Ostrich’s Ark laid the cornerstone for today’s KiBela Gallery. Since then, one could say that Maribor has become, as it were, a second hometown for Marko Jakše. Always a favorite in the eyes of both the crowd and the critics, this rebel »with a cause« fights the Establishment because he believes that the system impoverishes art and strips art of its basic postulate, which is freedom.
»The necessity for renewal is urgent, so much that it burns... and I’m as eager as hell! The day is fresh and shiny, the sun rays glimmering through the linden tree like crystals, the sun grinning straight at me ... I’m sorry, but this really isn’t a day to be spent in the studio, behind closed walls!«

More: https://jakse.mg-lj.si/en/