Photo: Dejan Habicht / Moderna galerija/Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana
The Minister of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia Asta Vrečko has appointed the Acting Director of Moderna galerija Martina Vovk as the Commissioner for the Venice Biennale 2024, and on the Commissioner’s suggestion, Vladimir Vidmar as the curator of the presentation. They have selected Nika Špan to represent Slovenia at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, running from 20 April until 24 November 2024.
Nika Špan is a conceptual artist with a highly varied practice encompassing many media and revolving around the concepts of authorship, the nature of the artwork and artistic practice, the question of value, and the legitimization of the phenomenon called art. At the heart of her artistic queries lies the art object, the focal point and axis of the (contemporary) art system. Špan makes use of the viewer experience, often tasking the viewer with finalizing her project in some way. Such endings, however, are never cathartic, but on the contrary often resolve into a specific shift of perspective rather than bringing the anticipated relief.
Nika Špan graduated in painting and took a postgraduate degree in sculpture, both from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. Between 1994 and 1997 she studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She has shown her work in numerous exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. Her most prominent presentations in Slovenia include her participation in the U3 Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Moderna galerija with Retrospective (1997), her solo show Sold Works at Moderna galerija’s project space Mala galerija (1999), her participation in Manifesta 3 (2000) with Ljubljana by Heart and in the exhibitions Was it a car or a cat I saw (Škuc Gallery, 2015) and U (Škuc Gallery, 2018). She lives and works in Düsseldorf and Ljubljana.
The project Nika Špan is preparing for the Venice Biennale 2024 in collaboration with the curator Vladimir Vidmar is ushered into the historical context of Venice as a foreign body, an alien and unexpected element. An enigmatic entity of a highly specific exterior, recognizable as something unnamable, it speaks about itself, recounting the story of its entry into the sphere of art, while at the same time (indirectly) addressing something else. It simultaneously represents an unusual parallel with what is at the center of the paradigm of art: It is an object alien to itself, alienating as a consequence the experience of everyone who encounters it.
Vladimir Vidmar is a freelance curator and the Artistic Director of the Mala Galerija Banke Slovenije art space. Between 2014 and 2018 he worked as the Artistic Director of the Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana. He holds degrees in philosophy and art history from the Faculty of Arts, and in journalism from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana. His curatorial projects include many solo exhibitions of, among others, Tadej Pogačar, Lala Raščić, Fokus grupa, Mladen Stropnik, Becky Beasley, Nika Špan, Nikita Kadan, Katalin Ladik, Rossella Biscotii, and Kevin van Braak, and numerous international group shows. He co-curated the overview exhibition Crises and New Beginnings: Art in Slovenia 2005–2015 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova in Ljubljana. He participated in the research project into the history of institutional critique in Central and Southeast Europe entitled Inside Out, and in the international exhibition project The Kids Want Communism at the Museum of Bat Ya in Tel Aviv. He regularly writes and publishes texts on contemporary artistic practices and also works as a lecturer.
