Jaka Babnik, Primož Bizjak, Tomo Brejc, Bor Cvetko, Jon Derganc, Jošt Dolinšek, Jošt Franko, Lin Gerkman, Tomaž Gregorič, Ištvan Išt Huzjan, Valerija Intihar, Peter Koštrun, PLATEAU RESIDUE, Hana Podvršič & Lana Požlep, Peter Rauch, Lucija Rosc, Špela Škulj, Aleksandra Vajd, Ana Zibelnik & Jakob Ganslmeier

+ Pavilion (works from Moderna galerija’s photographic collection and Photo Archive, selected by the participating artists)

Curator: Ana Mizerit

Exhibition opening: Thursday, 12 December 2024 | 8 p. m.

Space with a Potentiality for a Shift presents works by artists who, in their reflection on contemporary photographic practice caught between representation and participation, engage viewers in a different perception of space and time that can be associated with the concept of heterotopia. This refers to physical or conceptual spaces defined as “other spaces,” since they are located outside their proper sites, and can thus be also described as counter-sites. A characteristic trait is that they conventionally represent and reflect as well as contest and invert, thus serving as sites of the possible and new. A heterotopia as a spatial practice is defined in contrast to a utopia in terms of the difference between the void of the “no place” of utopia and the specificity of real places that in their contestation question the space in which we live.

Tracing developments in the medium of photography through the various artists’ practices and positions, the exhibition takes the concept of heterotopia as a model or metaphor. The exhibited works all share the gesture of looking for the incongruous and the disproportionate, disrupting the apparent continuity and “normality” of everyday space.

The exhibition focuses on different aspects of such contrasts. Firstly, it looks at a range of conceptual counter-spaces or counter-sites that are constructions of new dimensions or new meanings related to space, which gives rise to a certain topological incongruity in the works. These are often motifs of spaces or states in which we must reorient ourselves, or ambivalent spaces that defy the usual logic of order and the related feelings of identity, producing disorientation or anxiety by being in some way fragmentary. Heterotopias can be disturbing, but at the same time they have the potential to challenge real space and make visible what we will not or cannot see. Their context corresponds to the symptomatic social reality which demands of us that we think about alternative ways of existence through perceiving and creating different physical and mental heterotopic spaces that form the space of imagination, underscoring their critical potential while at the same time questioning what we think of as normal.

Another aspect of contrast given prominence in the exhibition relates to the reflection on the potential of photography moving between its historical role and the evolving post-photographic condition. The featured works based on photographic principles respond to the intensifying processes of fragmentation, multiplicity, and manipulation in the medium, presenting photography as a transformative medium in progress. On the one hand, this is apparent in embracing and exploiting technological evolution through the use of digital technology and artificial intelligence, along with its related independent creation of images. On the other, it consists of a sort of archaeology of the medium: in revisiting analogue processes, in the preference for the one-off and the unrepeatable, and in the appropriation of photographic archives. The presentation often goes beyond the established forms by including other artistic practices, giving photography the spatial properties and dimensions of an installation. The role of photography between representation and participation is highlighted, where an image is not merely a passive recorder of past events, but is active, relating to and able to impact physical existence.

The third aspect of contrast underscored in the show is the fact that in its primary function of revealing the world, photography can also be defined as an “other space,” arising from the gap between the image and its meaning, between the confirmation of the seen and its interpretation. Time and space are not only indispensable variables for the existence of photography, but also form the basis of the relation between photography and reality. Both have an inherent ambiguity. The spatial ambiguity is traditionally linked to the selective nature of the photographic view, to the author’s choice of motif and viewpoint, always presenting only a slice of the world. The temporal ambiguity relates to the lapse of time between the moment in which a photograph is taken and our moment of viewing it. While time stands still in a photograph, the viewer is forced to move in time through mental reconstruction, and to construct in the imagination. A photograph is thus not just about a moment in the past. Margaret Iversen describes photography as a performative gesture – not simply a pointing at an event in the world, but a subjective tracing of an event containing an odd displacement of the self. The image is therefore redefined as no longer related only to an instant and the past, but rather oriented to the future, to an expanded sense of time, to its accumulation or division. This suggests a break with the traditional concept of time, which Foucault links to the characteristics of heterotopias, or in this case, heterochronies. The context of performative photography shows how photographs can be documentary, realistic, staged, subjective, and narrative at the same time.

The concept of accumulating time in space underpins another, special project at the exhibition, involving Moderna galerija’s photographic collection. Entitled Pavilion, it constitutes a cumulative space created by the participating artists, a temporary and flexible construction conceived as a space within a space, an exhibition within an exhibition, allowing the exploration and activation of the collection. The aim is not to produce a number of individual exhibitions within the exhibition, but rather a diversity of views and perspectives in relation to the entire show, to the artists’ creative practices, and to the photographic collection, which is not merely an object of some concluded past or canonical understanding, but an active element of the present, relating to the current moment in a new and unexpected way.

The first exhibition of works from Moderna galerija’s photographic collection in the Pavilion will be prepared by artists Ana Zibelnik and Jakob Ganslmeier. Their selection focuses on photographs taken almost a century ago, and on the way they present an idealized version of Slovenia’s natural world as timeless and hopeful, inviting us to ponder on the meaning and implications of landscape photography today.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue will be published, bringing essays by Tomo Stanič (“Photo-topia”) and Lydia Matthews (“Shifting, But from and to Where?”), and texts by Esad Babačić, Miha Colner, Hana Čeferin, Busra Erkara, A.K., Miroslav Karić, Lucija Klauž, Ajda Ana Kocutar, Neža Kokol, Špela Pipan, Tjaša Pogačar & Jon Derganc, Amila Puzić, Urška Savič, Bertam Selim, Nina Skumavc, Goran Trbuljak, Aleksandra Vajd, Pieter Vermeulen and Dimitrij Mlekuž Vrhovnik.