Jože Šubic: Glorious Twelfth

Jože Šubic: Glorious Twelfth
26 January–10 March 2024
Galerija Prica, Trg Matice hrvatske 6, Samobor, Croatia

You are invited to the opening of the solo exhibition Glorious Twelfth by artist Jože Šubic, produced by KID KIBLA and on view at the Prica Gallery in Samobor from 26 January 2024 to 10 March 2024.
The opening of the exhibition will take place as part of the Night of Museums '24 event, starting on Friday, 26 January 2024, at 6 p.m.

Glorious Twelfth, or the hunt for woman in the art of Jože Šubic
With his new project, Jože Šubic deals with the theme of hunting, although hunting in the narrow sense of the word is used only in the choice of the title – Glorious Twelfth is the twelfth day of August, the start of the shooting season for red grouse, and to a lesser extent the ptarmigan in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Instead of dealing with the topic of wild bird hunting, he is after a metaphor, an allegory, a parable, or a simple story with a moral lesson (a term borrowed from literature) of a man hunting for a woman as prey or trophy, as an object of desire or erotic fantasy. He then extends this metaphor of hunting as a predominantly male hobby or game to reconsider gender differences in the context of art, whereby a significant, if not crucial role is given to sexual undertones and a kind of eroticism.

Glorious Twelfth consists of a series of twelve works: first, the Blowing Twins were created in 2016, followed by female figures with meaningful titles: Female Shooter, Moon Observer, Medusa, Sister of Mercy, The Girl Who Wants to Know How Wet She Is, Girl on a Bike, Chess Player, Reader, Pearl Diver, Te-Ta, and Slovenian Nightingale. The works continue and upgrade a series of sculptures of life-size women's heads, 'drowning women' and 'captives' as a metaphor for social marginality and exclusion (the 2012 art intervention in a decaying, century-old Žiče Mansion in Maribor's Lent as part of the European Capital of Culture; the 2014 exhibition at the Mihelič Gallery in Ptuj).

This gallery set-up, too, functions as a comprehensive ambience, in which at the first sight we witness another set of disciplined female bodies. And yet, the visible gallery setting delivers more than just iconically represented female figures immersed in more or less excessive activity. It offers the viewer the chance to get accustomed to an unknown experience, in the form of clichés about the female body and pleasure, sometimes driven to the point of unbearableness. At the same time, this acts as a point of suspense, which the artist achieves through contagious humor and multifaceted appeals to the imagination. The focus of Jože Šubic's work evolves in the direction of an associative intertwining of social rituals, sports, hobbies and games, art and sexuality. In this perspective, the enigma of femininity is a key agent for what resists being captured by power/authority and knowledge. Art can still point to it, although using allusion, in the form of metaphors or parables, such as those we can find in the work of Jože Šubic.

Biography
Jože Šubic was born in Maribor in 1958. In 1982 he graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he also completed his postgraduate studies in painting in 1984. He works in painting, sculpture, object art, ceramics and graphic art. He lives and works in Maribor. He has received the Glazer Award twice (1992 and 2013), as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award of the ZDSLU (2020), and many other national and international awards. His works have been shown in over 200 group and solo exhibitions.

More: https://www.samobor.hr/galerija-prica

Opening hours: Tuesday–Thursday: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Friday: 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday-Sunday: 10 a.m.