Discussion and opening: Friday, 13 June 2014, at 7 p.m., Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova

Duration: 13 June 2014 — 31 August 2014

Curator: Igor Španjol

Potočnik's banal direct realism attempts to present something spectacular or overlooked for the viewer to re-evaluate it. The choice of motives is dictated by everyday life events and the environment, and the painter is not particular or demanding. At the exhibition from the painting series Grid, for example, he presented objects at a clothing store and some images of nature, which usually remain obscured and invisible for being ordinary and uninteresting. More than a choice of motive, Potočnikov's artistic method is characterised by exploring the painting matter and thinking about the technical and compositional components of painting production. In this way, the artist affirms realism as a painting genre in modernity despite its historical abuses. The representation of the real in ways that emphasise the contradictions of the expression and the various forms of its understanding play a key role in Potočnik's search for relations of life and work.

Uroš Potočnik, born in Slovenj Gradec in 1974, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2006 and in 2012 completed his master's degree in the subject of Photo-painting. He lives in Bele vode near Šoštanj. He works in the fields of painting, photography, video, scientific illustration, noise rock, alternative and experimental music. Among other things, he received a special invitation amongst finalists of Essl Award in 2009, and in 2010 participated in the 6th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia U3.