With the exhibition project for Photo-Basel entitled Spaces Around Photography we would like to present three artists whose works are not “classical” photography, but are derived from photography or serve as a starting point for questioning about the nature of photography and it’s affinities to the other media. Selected and presented works are revealing a rather disperse, diverse creative strategies, relatively remote from the photographic medium. Such “mixed-media” works relate to the photographic medium on several different levels. They explore the ways in which photography penetrates other art fields, mostly painting, sculpture, performance and installation art. By combining various traditionally distinct visual art media they focus on new aspects of potential perception and interpretation of “works using photography”.

 

Markus Guschelbauer’s (1974, Austria) body of work is mainly characterised by a distinctive integration of photography and site-specific installation. The artist builds ephemeral sculptures / architectures in nature which are created solely for the camera and consequently for the gallery visitors. With his images and objects artist performs a reality in which the absolute definition of “natural” and “artificial” could easily be confused. His conceptual and contextual starting points, as well as his formal approach create a sophisticated strategy illustrating an apparent visual dichotomy between natural and superficial objects.

Alen Ožbolt‘s (1966, Slovenia) visual expression has its starting point in “spatial painting”, whereby he focuses on rendering three-dimensionality and the ambience of painting, introducing spatial and temporal categories to the perception of the viewer. Although the artist has never used photography as his primary creative medium, it has always played an important role in his artistic work in other media. Ožbolt was part of the group VSSD ((presented at Venice Biennial in 1995) from 1984-1995 and has been working independently since 1996. Since 2007 he has been a professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where he lives and works.

Stane Jagodič (1943, Slovenia) has been active in various fields of visual arts since the mid 1960s. In his continuous body of work he has adopted several different concepts of artistic production using various artistic media such as photography, painting, graphics, cartoons, performance, assemblages and object art (installations). Since 1967 Jagodič is using photography (e.g. photomontage and photo-collage), which became the most significant in his artistic production. He was a co-founder and conceptual leader of Grupa Junij, active between 1970 and 1985, broad artistic platform that included number of prominent local and international artists.