Thinking about art in terms of (material) worth instead of as a value is pretty much blasphemous in the tradition of European “fine arts”. The very idea of “fine arts”, which still largely determines our thinking about it, the idea of “art” as distinct from utilitarian or decorative art implies, in practical terms, the unbridled expression of the artist’s genius. Although contemporary art explicitly poses the question of the material conditions for its production, especially in the economic and political contexts in which it is embedded, the phenomenon of its marketing intensifies the paradox of its value more than ever before – the discrepancy between the value of its materials or material execution and its direct market value has never been greater.
Complex questions of art as a material value provide the conceptual frame-work for the exhibition The Value of Graphic Art (Vrednost grafike), which represents the graphic art production of art education students at the Uni-versity of Ljubljana Faculty of Education. Graphic art is especially handy for opening up this issue: despite having always been a component of fine arts, its capacity for reproduction has always undermined from within the ideo-logical assumption of art as unrepeatable and materially integral. Alongside expression, since the earliest times it has served the function of communi-cation and dissemination of visual ideas. In their works the students consider the various implications of the relationship of graphic art and value, and this covers the questions of art as the work and material status of the artist, the phenomenon of consumerism, but also more subtle considerations that take aim at the mystification of the relationship between work and value, which is embodied best by art itself. Created in various graphic techniques ranging from drypoint and monotype to etching and linocut, the works on the one hand are openly humorous, with darts of irony, and on the other hand are con-templative, existential, with a sense of a certain “unease in culture”.
The exhibition itself of The Value of Graphic Art is a radicalisation of the stance of graphic art as a deconstruction of the values of fine arts and of its value, removing from graphic art a direct physicality and presenting it in a different medium, in the form of a projection, visible only through a peephole in the dark-ened windows of the gallery. In this way it is presented in a certain ephemeral-ity, which heightens the issue of value both in graphic art and in art itself – art is a field of speculative value, it is a field where value is hard to determine directly, and for that reason also a field of manipulation and freedom.
Artists: Pavlina Stropnik, Jerca Rogelj, Ana Kolšek, Anamarija Založnik, Maja Bobnar, Tanja Železnik, Tanita Fabjan Demšar, Manca Semprimožnik, Ines Pahor, Eva Kozina, Dea Ferfolja, Ana Kavčič, Klementina Zavšek, Lovro Pinter, Hana Mele, Manca Sprager, Maja Breznikar, Nana Barborič Vesel, Ana Fon, Urša Barič, Kaja Tuta, Anja Najvirt, Anja Hvastija Gaia, Tina Krajnc, Debora Oberžan, Ana Forjan, Vanesa Hochkraut, Kristina Filipčić, Valentina Kaluža, Tjaša Morela, Gloria Ana Lupus
Mentors: Prof. Mag. Črtomir Frelih and Asst. Prof. Mag. Zora Stančić
MGBS Curator: Vladimir Vidmar
Production: Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana
