Adrijan Praznik

The Final Frontier

2014, digital collage, transfer and acrylic on canvas, 250 x 170 cm

Adrijan Praznik’s monumental works deal with the issue of contemporary artistic gesture as fundamentally mediated in an original way (his paintings are produced as digital prints transferred onto prepared canvas, a process that renders authorship questionable or relative). In subject matter, his works explicitly refer to media images from popular culture, the mass media, and B film production, i.e. images that are seen as visually attractive and spectacular on the one hand, and on the other, as cheap, mass produced, ephemeral, exchangeable, and kitschy. As such they represent symptomatic images of our contemporary collective imagery, elevated and fixed in the pictorial field by the artist’s complex procedure, which, paradoxically, incites fascination with and distance from the historically eminent status of painting as a medium.

Adrijan Praznik (1988, Ljubljana) je leta 2016 diplomiral na Akademiji za likovno umetnost in oblikovanje, smer slikarstvo, pri mentorju mag. Žigi Karižu in somentorju dr. Tomislavu Vignjeviću. Prejemal je štipendijo Mestne občine Ljubljana za nadarjene študente ter prejel nagrado Akademije za likovno umetnost in oblikovanje za posebne umetniške dosežke v akademskem letu 2011/2012. Razstavljal je na številnih skupinskih in samostojnih razstavah doma in v tujini (Češka, Bosna in Hercegovina, Grčija, Italija, Nemčija idr.). Njegova dela so del zbirke Imago Mundi – Luciano Benetton Collection in Mednarodnega grafičnega likovnega centra, MGLC. Živi in dela v Ljubljani.