Mark Požlep: Whatever Happened to Major Tom

Installation, video 25' 30", 2 photographs 100 x 70 cm, project fragments, logbook, 2012

Požlep's Whatever Happened to Major Tom is a follow-up to his earlier project Close to the Clouds; Not to be Seen or Expelled. Požlep analyses the dual position of the artwork, connected to life yet cut off from it in its exhibition space, against the backdrop of the relationship between reality and fiction. These dualities are pursued through a project which begins with the artist buying a five-metre wooden boat from 1949 in Hamburg, renovating it and using it to transport a palm tree to the tiny isolated island of Školjić in the Cres archipelago. The work traces his inspiring Sisyphean voyage, building on a romantic imagination according to which slumbering ideals can only be awakened by heroic deeds, even if these are doomed to failure from the outset.

Photo: Damjan Švarc

Production: The Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana (MGML)

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Mark Požlep (1981, Celje). He graduated in painting 2006 from the Academy of fine Arts, Ljubljana, mentored by Prof Herman Gvardjančič and Prof Srečo Dragan. He has been presenting his work at solo exhibitions since 2000. His works have been shown in many European cities: Berlin, Toulouse, Bratislava, Venice, Belfast, Belgrade, and in almost all major Slovenian galleries. He explores in the filed of painting, drawing, video, ambient installation and performance. In the past two years he has been trying to construct unique 3D spaces, i.e. playground/film/urban setting to place the observer in new situations by transforming their position from that of viewer to that of an active participant. Such spaces open up particular social realities questioning the position of individuality, freedom, art and the opportunity to express oneself in the capitalist, consumer-oriented era. He uses encountered materials and objects to establish entirely new relations in new settings. In Slovenia, Mark became known through his multimedia installation Zadnja večerja superherojev / Last Supperof Superheroes at U3 triennial exhibition in Ljubljana Museum of Modern Art. His multimedia installation Break Through won him the Essl Award, and was thus made part of the Vienna-based Essl Collection. Urban Savage, a multimedia installation in the Gallery of Contemporary Art Celje, and many others are considered the very peak of contemporary Slovenian visual art.

Artist's web page: pozlepmark.com