AMBIENCE XVII

Sašo Vrabič

1974, Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia; lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia

Covers 1–3, 2006

3 paintings, acrylic and letter-press on canvas

Sašo Vrabič’s works are crucially marked by the contemporary context of media-sourced and computer-generated images. One of the main strategies of his practice is the recycling of visual material that Vrabič recontextualizes by placing it in a different medium (often painting). Although projects combining various visual media represent the bulk of his creative activity, Vrabič is also interested in music, which played an important role (alongside other circumstances) in the creation of the series Covers I‑III.

In Covers I‑III Vrabič uses the example of the well-known song “Strangers in the Night” to thematize the questions of originality and authorship in the context of East-West relations. Since the East was defined by the lack of a developed art system – its own art institutions and mechanisms of historicization and evaluation – the West was supposedly a space of tradition and authenticity, while the East could only mimic and copy Western concepts and styles. The series of three paintings combines realistically painted album covers and Wikipedia quotes, giving a different view by pointing out the “unclear” authorship of “Strangers in the Night”. We learn from Cover I that the author of the melody was the Yugoslav singer Ivo Robić; Cover II tells us that the melody was first recorded as a part of a film score composed by Bert Kaempfer; and Cover III that it was Frank Sinatra who received a Grammy Award for the song in 1966. The word cover has many meanings, of which at least three are at play in Vrabič’s series. On the one hand, it signifies the motif of the paintings – an album cover, and on the other, the re-arrangement of a well-known melody. However, it can also be understood as a disguise; the procedures of appropriating and copying employed by Vrabič can be seen as a form of concealing one’s identity or at least making it somewhat less clear.