Herman Pivk steadily develops a distinctive style immersed in the monochrome debris of an indefinable time, that is as much yesterday’s as it is today’s. His works have been given an otherworldly, gleaming metallic shine by means of prints on aluminium plates. In the cross-section of approaching civilizational traumas of passing and ceasing, they attempt to connect to unfathomable rituals which, as a sign of eternal presence, archetypally leave behind a trace of the symbolic.

A piercing light, sometimes just a flash, stages the mysterious convergence of opposing extremes in a surreal landscape. The hybrid interplay of the real and the imaginary, the human and the animal, the living and the dead, reflects the contemporary condition of the alienated spirit, which is torn not only from nature and the rules with which existences move through the world’s ambiance in their interrelationships, but also forms itself as it seeks shelter in search of an unpredictable doppelgänger. Pivk’s “subjective camera” is like an insatiable predator, a tool to penetrate the underbelly of reality. It seeks to understand the shadows lurking behind the scenes of contemporary visual culture, simultaneously familiar and malevolent, inward-looking and provocative. His works from HA – LO oeuvre are like the echo of an inner call seeking an answer to the elusive, eternal question: Where are we?

– Marko Košan