Throughout its long history, ceramics has always walked the line between functional art and fine art. An awareness of the shift from one type of art to the other is the key to understanding this exhibition. Thanks to the constitutive tension that modern art so richly exploits, in recent decades ceramic art has enjoyed a unique rebirth. The porosity of ceramics to inputs “from outside”, in combination with the distinctly formal precision of its idiom, is the starting point for the four young artists in their exploration. On one hand they are reframing questions of the relationship between surface and interior, be it through suggestive organic concepts of durability and decay with all their concomitant existential implications (Tamara Bregar), or through formally more rarefied cuts into the covering that protects the integrity of the artwork (Mariša Ribič). On the other hand the external may also be present more directly, as a fragment of burned-out nature, which works simultaneously as an environmental commentary and a meta-thought in the creative process (Ana Kavčnik). Then there is the outside visitor, whose intervention, curiosity and touch is needed for the perfection of the work (Satya Pene).
Vladimir Vidmar, MGBS Curator
The primary aim of studying ceramics at the UL Faculty of Education is for the art teachers of the future to gain the skills needed when guiding children in working with clay. Students have every chance and opportunity to enhance this skill during their studies, and to develop their own creative exploration. The exhibited works show that the most interesting results come through the interplay of creativity, technology, experimentation and will, and evolve throughout the working process. The study of ceramics at the Faculty of Education pursues and seeks a communication between the material, the form and the surface through the study of technological and expressive possibilities, and experimentation, in other words the most challenging aspects of the art form. We are of course aware that modern art in general is no longer fine art, but above all a commentary.
Mirko Bratuša, mentor
Artists: Tamara Bregar, Ana Kavčnik, Satya Pene, Mariša Ribič
Mentor: prof. Mirko Bratuša
MGBS Curator: Vladimir Vidmar
Production: Faculty of Education UL, Academy of music UL
