Goran Bertok: Post Mortem & Borut Krajnc: Emptiness / Politics
25-26 June 2015 at 6 pm
Opservatorijum, Space for Photography, Krunska 42, Belgrade
Within the two-day event two Ljubljana based photographers and artists will be introduced at Opservatorijum, namely Goran Bertok and Borut Krajnc. They are amongst the most active and critically acclaimed figures on the photographic scene in Ljubljana whose work is focused on the topical issues of their immediate surrounding: Bertok explores attitudes of modern societies towards death and decay of human body referring to postmortem photography, while Krajnc deals with the relationship between politics and economy using both, conceptual and documentary approaches.
Curated by Miha Colner (Photon – Center for Contemporary Photography, Ljubljana)
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Goran Bertok: Post Mortem
Thursday, 25 June at 6 pm
The Post Mortem exhibition presents distinctive body of work of the artist who has over the past twenty five years explored fragility and ephemerality of human body, and finally, its utmost end – physical death. In his early career Goran Bertok has produced staged photographs displaying scenes of violated bodies and unconventional sexual practices, while in the past decade he has been profoundly exploring the phenomena of death and dead human body. In the Post Mortem (2007-2012) series of photographs he focuses on frozen dead bodies, decaying piles of flesh and blood, in the clinic environment of a morgue.
“Bertok thus depicts stench and dread of the mortuary, crematory, anatomic institutes, unknown spaces where people usually enter for postmortem identification of the relatives, last farewell, or don’t enter at all. This spaces, charged with horror of cognition of ultimateness of life and disgust of civilisation, caused by corpse itself are not meant for ‘innocent view’ – burnt away, dismembered, without living. The artist analyses the actuality of death and speaks about present position of the individual and his end.” (excerpt from the text of Tatjana Orbović)
Goran Bertok (1963) has graduated in Journalism at the Faculty of Sociology, Political Sciences and Journalism in Ljubljana. Since 1989 he lives and works as an independent artist in Ljubljana.
Borut Krajnc: Emptiness / Politics
Friday, 26 June at 7 pm
Artist and photographer Borut Krajnc continuously reflects micro or macro situations in his immediate surroundings. One of his most comprehensive ongoing projects is the Emptiness (2004-2008) series of photographs, where he documented empty billboards, city-lights and other advertising surfaces. And these are very unlike situations. Krajnc has followed, professionally and privately, more or less evident traces of ideological and social shifts, transition from the old to the new social and political order, the expansion of the free market, the ruthless struggle for dominance and other general consequences of globalisation.
In continuity with his own work he recently published the Politics (2012-2014) series of photographs that was shot during the electoral campaign of current Slovenian president Borut Pahor. The candidate who was determined to win the elections (and he eventually did) decided to get closer to the ordinary people by taking on work in primary and secondary sector, i. e. in the factories and on the fields. Krajnc has documented the charade and revealed the most ignobly populist gesture of the local political elites who have in the past two decades, like all the elites across Europe, openly supported interests of capital at the expense of the people.
Borut Krajnc (1964) is a documentary photographer and photojournalist at the weekly magazine Mladina, as well as an independent artist who lives and works in Ljubljana.