Discussion: Thursday, 29 May 2014, at 7 p.m., Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova
Duration: 8 April 2014 — 1 June 2014
Curator: Igor Španjol
Meta Grgurevič deals with questions of intimacy; cleansed elements of everyday life, traces of history and memory, playfulness of figures, enhanced triviality of objects and pop culture.
The video Dream to Recall Forgotten Thoughts is a part of a more complex project Lucid Dream (HIAP open studio, Cable Factory, Helsinki, 2012), in which Meta Grgurevič contemplated the tension between ideas, i.e., a brilliant conception, and reality, which often opposes the former. The artist, however, does not limit herself only to the age-old antagonism between ideals and reality; the conceptual core of the exhibition is a deliberation on a hypothetical space (or even a state), which is exposed to reality, but at the same time remains autonomous. The works within the project are inspired particularly by two key figures from the fields of science and art - Nikola Tesla and Vladimir Tatlin. Both wanted to improve the world with their work, but their idealism shattered on the wall of reality, and the once vigorous, even seemingly achievable, ideas became a part of the history of impossible.
The counterpoint to the works is the video Dream to Recall Forgotten Thoughts. The speech delivered by Charlie Chaplin in the role of the great dictator Adenoid Hynkel is the strongest narrative component of the video. The video accents the utopian connotations of the other works (implied by referencing Tesla and Tatlin) and at the same time connects the past, present and future, both in its aesthetics and content matter. Despite the seemingly idealistic message the video is marked by a certain ambivalence - we are listening to Chaplin, who was one of the first to openly attack Nazism, and simultaneously to an elated dictator, who was formed in circumstances not too dissimilar from the present.
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Meta Grgurevič obtained a postgraduate degree in Arti Visive e Discipline dello Spettacolo, specialization painting, from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in Italy in 2007. In 2010 she was awarded a grant from the Ministry of Culture in Slovenia. Between 2002 and 2006 she had a grant from the Ljubljana City Council. In 2002 she co-founded the artist group Passaporta (Mara Ambrožič, Jasmina Cibic, Mery Favaretto, Meta Grgurevič), The group works between Venice, Ljubljana, Granada, and London. She lives and works in Ljubljana.
The discussion between the artist Meta Grgurevič and curator Igor Španjol took place on Thursday, 29 May 2014 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova.
