michele drascek

MA Curating Final Show - Chelsea College, London

2011-08-31T00:12:00.010+02:00

MA Curating Final Show

at

Chelsea Summer Shows 2011: Postgraduate

Private View + VIP Breakfast*: Friday 2 September 2011 / 18.00 – 21.00 and 8.00 – 11.00
Open to public: Friday 2 September – Thursday 8 September
Opening hours: Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 – 16.00 / Monday – Friday: 10.00 – 19.00

MA Art Theory
MA Curating
MA Fine Art
MA Graphic Design Communication
MA Interior Spatial Design
MA Textile Design

Venue: Chelsea College of Art and Design, 16 John Islip Street, London SW1P 4JU
For more information email: info@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
Twitter – @ccwlondon / hashtag – #summershows11
*Please note VIP Breakfast is by invitation only

Frozen Events; a simple act of being - Flat Time House

2011-08-03T22:59:00.007+02:00

presents

Frozen Events; a simple act of being

a project by Manca Bajec, Michele Drascek and Emma Moore.

Flat Time House
Friday 5th - Friday 12th August
Preview Friday 5th, 6 - 8pm

This show presents the work of two emerging artists, Nicholas Johnson and Haruka Hashiguchi. Both artists address the issue of the immaterial and the absent presence that lingers in Flat Time House. Hashiguchi uses found objects and textiles in her delicate, intricate installations. Johnson creates beautiful music compositions, drawing inspiration from natural objects.

Preview Friday 5th August, 6 - 8pm.
Exhibition opening times: Friday 5th, Saturday 6th, Sunday 7th, Thursday 11th, and Friday 12th August, 12 - 6pm.

Flat Time House
210 Bellenden Road
London SE15 4BW
+44 (0)20 7207 4845
info@flattimeho.org.uk
http://www.flattimeho.org.uk/

Flat Time House is the home and studio of the late British artist John Latham.

Flat Time House (detail)
Installing the exhibition, 1st July 2011

Flat Time House is a few minutes walk from Peckham Rye and East Dulwich British Rail stations. There are regular, fast trains from London Bridge & Victoria. Buses to Peckham Library or Rye Lane.

The John Latham Foundation

RELAY Book Launch in Peckham Space

2011-06-23T23:49:00.066+02:00

RELAY BOOK LAUNCH

24 June 2011

6-8:30pm

Relay is the third in the Bright Series of publications.

Relay works through cross-course collaboration between MRes Arts Practice, MA Art Theory and MA Curating. By showing how research is carried out in projects practice, Relay brings the relationship between creative practice, research and teaching to life.

Featuring Michele Drascek's contribution in the chapter Art & Society.

The launch coincides with David Cotterrell’s exhibition, Slipstream.
This evening is also a Last Friday with over 90 South London Art Map venues open ‘til late.

24 June 2011
6-8:30pm
Peckham Space
89 Peckham High Street
London SE 15 5RS

Peckham Space / Relay Book Launch:

http://www.peckhamspace.com/

http://peckhamspace.com/project/slipstream/publication-relay

South London Art Map:

http://www.southlondonartmap.com/

Isolated Figures in Royal Academy of Arts, London

2011-05-30T22:17:00.000+02:00

I assume a passive attitude and I wait
from the series Isolated Figures
selected
from Royal Academy of Arts
for the Summer Exhibition 2011

I assume a passive attitude and I wait
form the series Isolated figures
mixed technique on canvas
20x15x2 cm.

Summer Exhibition 2011
7 June - 15 August 2011

Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD

for more information:
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

The Summer exhibition 2011 is a unique presentation of recent and new work by both artists from open submission and from the Academicians. Gallery 3 (the largest in the Academy and traditionally used for the display of work by Royal Academicians and Honorary RAs) will be hung in the style of a ‘salon hang’. The aim is to exploit the grandeur of the Academy’s principal room with a memorably dense and rich visual experience.

THE DRAWING - Wimbledon Space, London

2011-03-24T12:19:00.006+01:00

the drawing collective

// Michele Drascek Manca Bajec Emma Moore Milia Xin Bi //

present

Collective / Interview / Gallery Visit / Money / Value / Authorship / Misunderstandings / Determination / Unfinished / The impossibility of the display of absolute knowledge-understanding.

"You don't understand the meaning of my gesture". We have been caught up in an endless cycle of idea, pursuit, discovery and advancement - how to convey the fact that for four months four individuals worked consistently with the idea of purchasing one artwork. Throughout this process, the act of doing/pursuing becomes all consuming and overshadows the act of presentation or exhibition. In a desperate attempt to reconcile the two, 'doing' exhausts itself to the point of displaying incomprehensible lines of enquiry and discovery.

Tangled in a mess of correspondences and miscommunication lie an archive of lived experience: impossible to be accurately displayed, unlikely to be repeated, definitely to be continued.

http://forthedrawing.blogspot.com/

the drawing at Wimbledon Space:

http://www.wimbledon.arts.ac.uk/

the drawing collective would like to thank the following for their contribution to the project:

Donald Smith
David Medalla
Stephen Farthing
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Jason Brown
Rober Lee
Nicola Shane
Haroon Mizra
Antony Hudek
Isobel Whitelegg
Joseph Heatcott
Donald Moore
David Dibosa
Richard Boyd
Clare Mitte
Mary Doyle
Philip Athill
Oisin Merrins
Neil Cummings
Guy Brett
Tom Rooth
Ellie Pitkins
Rydal Hanbury
Sarah Catherine Gifford
Christina Gassner
David Garcia
Gustavo Grandal-Montenero

COMING SOON

2011-03-20T20:35:00.005+01:00

WLSRP exhibition set up in Chelsea Space

2011-03-08T13:47:00.001+01:00

present

THE WEST LONDON SOCIAL RESOURCE PROJECT PUBLIC MONITOR 1972

by Stephen Willats

In the early 1970’s Stephen Willats developed a new project which revolutionised art and its reception and created a prototype for the future of art practice. The work was called The West London Social Resource Project and its aim was to be socially responsible, self organising, inclusive, and community-based to reflect societal values, behaviour, contextual language, and environment and to encourage those normally excluded from “high” culture to participate.

This is a unique opportunity to see this work, that has informed the agenda of much of current art practice, on display in London for the first time in over thirty years. Stephen Willats has generously collaborated with us and Special Collections Librarian, Gustavo Grandal Montero, to create a new installation of the Public Monitor devised especially for CHELSEA space.

(excerpt from Chelsea Space press release)

Installing WLSRP in Chelsea Space

THE WEST LONDON SOCIAL RESOURCE PROJECT PUBLIC MONITOR 1972
Stephen Willats

Director of exhibitions: Donald Smith
Assistant curators: Michele Drascek, Barbara Elting

Private view: Tuesday 8th March 2011, 6 – 8.30pm

08.03.11 - 09.04.11
Opening time
Tuesday - Friday: 11am - 5pm
Saturday: 10am - 4pm

Visit the Chelsea Space official website:
http://www.chelseaspace.org/

Monitoring Stephen Willats on Chelsea Space Blog:
http://www.chelseaspace.org/blog/archives/504

"The Fourth Wall" in Living Space - 2nd AllArtNow Festival, Syria

2010-08-30T12:00:00.009+02:00

Michele Drascek
The Fourth wall
Performance / video
2008-2009
Theatre Kud Preseren
Ljubljana, Slovenia

camera Maja Slavec
assistant Ursa Vidic
sound Sebastien Fraboulet

The artist performs at the centre of the stage, hanging on the roof.
In front of him “The fourth wall” (in the theatrical language it is the imaginary wall that separates the stage from the audience). He tries to dismantle this wall with his still look and presence. He replaces himself in the temple of representation. Liturgical value of the action, mysterious dimension of the space and slowness of the performance are stressed by the sound of a church that carries a certain feeling of the ineffable.

3.KANAL: MALA ZVEZDA

2010-06-01T20:00:00.002+02:00

MALA ZVEZDA
by Robert Srebrnič

The artist has received the student Prešeren award for his diploma work titled Mala zvezda [Little Star].
The simple story narrated in the animation provides interesting answers relating to our current human attitude towards nature. Representing the main idea, the narrative Little Star exposes two messages appearing in the story as two central developments, mutually intertwining, supplementing each other and unfolding the contents in cooperation. The first message is about ethics, about what an attitude the individual and the society should have towards nature. The second message explains the role of the main actor representing a boy, a child who has only just begun to shape his world. And he starts to be aware of his existence.

June 2010

KINO ŠIŠKA

Center for Urban Culture

Ljubljana (Slovenia)

3rd video screen in upper lobby

during public events in the Katedrala hall

http://www.kinosiska.si/

3.KANAL: AUDIOCREACTIVE + KIAKOSHI

2010-05-08T16:51:00.013+02:00

O

AUDIOREACTIVE + KIAKOSHI
by JORINNA SCHERLE

curated by Michele Drascek

Based on the principles of minimal music, AUDIOREACTIVE visualizes microtonal events such as frequency, duration, tone pitch and sound volume in 3-dimensional environments.

At first developed and designed independently, the 3d-setups reveal their connection to the sound through the animation in many different ways. The audio influences and controls variables such as position, size, color, light, texture or physical principles like gravity or magnetism.

AUDIOREACTIVE encompasses following pieces:

POLY:GON - sound: Tim Hecker

E-LINES - sound: DACM, Tim Hecker

MAGNETO - sound: Tim Hecker

SW - sound: Radiohead

CHENILLE - sound: Fennesz

"KIAKOSHI – come alive" is a corporate film for the autumn/winter 09/10 collection of KIAKOSHI – a newcomer fashion label from Berlin with Japanese roots. Themed "come alive" five sleeping fashion ikebanas awake and enfold delicately their own worlds until they end up in an awake position. The film shows an intimate and emotional expression of the designers taste, one that explores the contradictions and dualities in vintage and modern fashion.

Jorinna Scherle is a motion designer and director from Berlin, Germany. Besides commercial design jobs, she tries to spend as much time as possible on creating digital art and design.

Starting in 2002 she has been attending the University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden for communications design and media informatics, where she studied everything from graphic design to photography, painting and programming. She graduated 2009 Magna Cum Laude.

Her films have been shown at festivals, galleries, magazines, TV programmes and blogs worldwide.

http://www.jorinna.com/

KINO ŠIŠKA

Center for Urban Culture

Ljubljana (Slovenia)

3rd video screen in upper lobby

during public events in the Katedrala hall

http://www.kinosiska.si/

3.Kanal:

http://www.kinosiska.si/en/events/exhibitions-and-film/2010-05-07/3rd_channel_audioreactive_kiakoshi/151/

3. KANAL: THE IMAGINARY OF ELECTROMAGNETIC TRANSFORMATIONS

2010-04-13T18:27:00.009+02:00

"The Imaginary of Electromagnetic Transformations"
by Maja Smrekar

This time 3rd Channel presents video material that has been created in the third/last series of the original project The imaginarium of electromagnetic transformations, which was executed on 26 November 2009 by Maja Smrekar and Luka Prinčič within the project CIRKULACIJA 2 and Net.Art Community Convention/MediaLab Graz.
The dialogue happened in real time as a live-stream performance linking MMC Kiberpipa in Ljubljana and Kunsthaus Graz in Austria. While conceiving and executing her projects, the intermedia artist Maja Smrekar seeks to rearticulate the use of new and old technologies from a socially critical viewpoint, as well as expose interdisciplinarily and interactively the synergy of mutual relations between fields of science, art and technology in relation to the systems of subjective perception of space and repressive systems of power and control. She thus wishes to reinterpret diverse phenomena of past and present media environments in an analytic manner, as well as warn critically of potential images of future realities of media and the society.

Curator: Michele Drascek

KINO ŠIŠKA
Center for Urban Culture
Ljubljana (Slovenia)
From 1st to 30th April 2010
http://www.kinosiska.si/

3rd video screen in upper lobby
(during public events in the large Katedrala hall)

3. KANAL: REVALUATION IN KINO ŠIŠKA

2010-03-03T15:01:00.004+01:00

present

3. KANAL:
Revaluation by Maja Slavec
curated by Michele Drascek

Maja Slavec [Slovenia] Maja Slavec (1979) graduated in art pedagogy from the Faculty of Education, Maribor in 2005. A year later she entered the masters programme in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts, Ljubljana, mentored by Prof Milan Pajk. As she completed her undergraduate studies, an exhibition in Media Nox gallery hinted at a typical feature of her work, i.e. the objects that are featured in her art photography are never revealed in full. Rather, the artist presents us with a concealed view through the peephole, neither voyeuristic nor objective, but multilayered and well considered. The artist particularly attracted the attention of general public last year, as she was included in the review of Slovenian feminist art Women are coming! which was organised within the City of Women festival. She presented performance video documentation Woman Beauty Power Less, which she enacted in the centre of Ljubljana. The artist doesn't idealise the role of the woman, nor is she looking for the 'natural' original woman's role, rather, she is looking for a woman that is aware entirely of her relationship towards her social role.
http://maja-slavec.blogspot.com/

REVALUATION
Performance in public space
video
42'

The movement of the dancer has the intention to create circles in the space. The circles represent the public system (political, cultural, economical, etc.) that has an impact on our life, with or without our approval.
The “tondo” is a micro system of intimate space, a system that exists among others. I see the intimate and the public structures as closed systems in which we could fit in or not. The movement of the dancer creates an intimate story that is trying to fit in a public structure, but the figure is constantly breaking the perfect shape and creating his/her own ones. The figure represents the autonomy of a living being, with the frustrations that he/she develops in the process of growth.
The main shape – the circle - can be seen as an ocular or as a general shape of the life path that I understand as a repetition in general. As Artists, I think that we have the same path to follow, but we have greater autonomy than the others. We constantly revaluate the system, we tighten its borders and we account for our actions under the autonomy of Art.
The interconnections between the space of the dancer and the people involved by chance in the performance represent the relations tied in our society, inside the system. In the end: Are these relations under our control? Or, since they are tied in the system, is it the system itself that controls our relations? Who is the winner? The individual or the system? Is the path we choose to walk ours? Or is it controlled by the system of our political, economical or cultural structures? Are we really free in our decisions?
The second part of the video goes backwards: it is the revaluation of a life that ended. What could we do better? Do we accept the past or we are sorry for the things we did? After all, is the power of being still strong enough to arrive to our life end with a smile? What does it mean to be significant? And to whom? Did our life as artists have an impact on the society?

KINO ŠIŠKA
Center for Urban Culture
Ljubljana (Slovenia)
From 1st March to 31st March 2010
Everyday from 9am till 8pm
+ night screening
http://www.kinosiska.si/

Revaluation:
http://www.kinosiska.si/en/events/exhibitions-and-film/2010-03-03/3rd_channel_revaluation_curator_michele_drascek/108/

3. KANAL: V-ATAK in KINO ŠIŠKA

2010-01-27T12:10:00.010+01:00

present

3. KANAL:
V-Atak
curated by Michele Drascek

V-ATAK [France]
Founded in 2002, V-Atak is a label dedicated to audio and visual art.
Made up with a hybrid mix of Vj’s, movie makers and musicians, the label grew year after year and developed an edgy identity on the Audio/Video live scene.
When performing video/audio live art and producing music clips as well, the crew is at its best by taking risks. V-Atak services and products (installations, Vjing, DVDs) reflect that constant questioning that the label has on manner and matter, playing with the ever-changing digital technology and its limits.
While society, corporations and politics use images and media to exert a control on the masses, V-Atak challenges common sense and ideas through images and sounds. The process that has become them trademark, distorting contemporary media icons to recreate an original sense, offers the public an opportunity to question with irony and violence the mass media representations.
http://www.v-atak.com/
The video Death Mariachi, Feeding your back and Fuel tank presented in 3.Kanal are included in the DVD and CD “Tzii - Rotten Friendship”, produced by V-Atak and Night On Earth (audio label). "Tzii - Rotten Friendship" arises from the encounter between Robin Kobrynski (aka RKO) and Eric Desjeux (aka Tzii), respective founders of these two labels.

FEEDING YOUR BACK
(daisy)
Directed by 1n0ut
Music by TZII
Duration: 9’20
Year of production: 2008
Location of production: JAPAN / USA
Production: 1n0ut / V-ATAK
DVD 16/9 PAL
Synopsis: A digital resurrection of poor dead creatures, which accompany a dark musical flow. Morphs of dead taxidermy corps tunnel a vision of dead digital eternity.

DEATH MARIACHI
Directed by RKO
Music by TZII & RKO
Duration: 9’45
Year of production: 2008
Location of production: MEXICO / FRANCE
Production: V-ATAK
DVD 16/9 PAL
Synopsis: Images and sounds collected through Mexico as postcards. Swirling around eclectic scenes of this country, a camera guides us in the inmost depths of a dolls sanctuary...The death is only represented by the support of films, discovering little by little the dark faces of this trip to the country of Mariachis.

FUEL TANK
Directed by TOFF alias Christophe Rannou
Music by TZII
Duration: 6’
Year of production: 2008
Location of production: FRANCE
Production: V-ATAK
DVD 16/9 PAL
Synopsis: Dark echo from the chaos resound into the infinit...

PULSAR 23
Directed by Robin Kobrynski
Music by Pedro Penas Robles
Duration: 10'
Year of production: 2005
Location of production: France
Production: V-ATAK
16/9 PAL
Synopsis:The action is located in a post-apocalyptic world. The war ravaged a part of the humanity. Some survivors persist on this contaminated earth. Teams of human beings locked in bunker send robots to find survivors...

KINO ŠIŠKA
Center for Urban Culture
Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Opening 1st February 2010
Everyday from 9am till 8pm
+ night screening
www.kinosiska.si

v-atak agenda:
http://www.v-atak.com/events/01022010-v-atak-screening-kinosiska-lubjana-slovenia

3. KANAL in KINO ŠIŠKA: Night Screening

2009-12-04T15:11:00.008+01:00

000

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3. KANAL in KINO ŠIŠKA

2009-11-27T14:49:00.031+01:00

present

3 KANAL:
Anders Weber
curated by Michele Drascek

FOR SORE EYES // by Anders Weberg

duration 2min17sec / 2006

preview link:

http://recycled.se/project/for-sore-eyes/

“For Sore Eyes” is another exploration of the ambivalence of the male gaze and gendered (dis)order. It is a suggestive reflection of life in the pyrotechnic in sanatorium of consumerism freedom. But what is really freedom?

MAMO - MOTHER // by Anders Weberg

duration 2.30 min / August / 2008

Video and Sound by Anders Weberg

Filmed with mobile phone. ( Nokia N82 Black)

Senses and memories of motherhood evoked by visiting Birkenau (Auschwitz II) in Poland July 2008.

MIRROR MIRROR // Collaboration Anders Weberg, Sweden and Alison Williams, South Africa.

duration 2min30sec / July 2009

A mirror is an object with at least one polished and therefore reflective surface. The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface. Curved mirrors are also used, to produce magnified or diminished images or focus light or simply distort the reflected image. Mirrors are commonly used for personal grooming (in which case the old-fashioned term "looking-glass" can be used), decoration, and architecture. In this instance - two people are the mirrors, making an attempt at echoing their emotions through visual media. The looking glass of the soul. Also the artists Anders Weberg & Alison Wiliams have never met in real life, only seen each other on line and therefore their emotions are kind of filtered by the net. More "unreal" than real.

ELSEWHERENESS – YOKOHAMA // by Anders Weberg and Robert Willim

2008

Commissioned by the Dislocate 08 festival in Yokohama/Tokyo

link: http://www.elsewhereness.com

The works in the Elsewhereness series are made solely from audio and videomaterial found on the web, material that emanates from a specific place. The audiovisual pieces are manipulated and composed into a surreal journey through an estranged landscape, based entirely on the culturally bound and stereotypical preconceptions of the artists about the actual location. The finished Elsewhereness work can be downloaded into a media player or mobile phone and enjoyed when walking around the surroundings of the specific place, from which the material emanates.

The first part of the series was Elsewhereness: Yokohama, commissioned by the Dislocate 08 festival in Yokohama/Tokyo. The second part was Eslewhereness:Cape Town, commissioned by Cape 09 Art Biennale, 2009, Cape Town, South Africa.

As the series expands, a number of places will be joined over time into a web of surreal associations of difference and similarity, reflecting something about the various places but also about cultural preconceptions.

ANDERS WEBERG // ARTIST // FILM MAKER

1968, born in Landskrona, Sweden. Live and works in Malmö, Sweden

Anders is an artist and filmmaker working in video, sound, new media and installations and he is primarily concerned with identity. The human body lies at the root of projects that formally and conceptually chart identity and its construction as a preamble to broaching matters of violence, genders, memory, loss or ideology in which personal experiences co-exists with references to popular culture, the media and consumerism. Specializing in digital technologies, he aims to mix genres and ways of expression to explore the potential of audio visual media. Currently based Malmö in the south of Sweden and has exhibited at numerous art/film festivals, galleries, and museums internationally.

http://www.andersweberg.com/

KINO ŠIŠKA

Center for the Urban Culture

Ljubljana (Slovenia)

Opening 1st December 2009

Everyday from 9am till 8pm

3.KANAL

slo/eng

http://www.kinosiska.si/sl/dogodki/razstave-in-film/2009-12-01/

http://www.kinosiska.si/en/events/exhibitions-and-film/2009-12-01/

KINO ŠIŠKA:

http://www.kinosiska.si/

Cercavi tra l'erba le parole - cover

2009-10-23T15:30:00.012+02:00

There's something I can't quite make out...
Margarita fades away! [refer to the post 2007 - December - Fade out Drawings]

cover for the poems

Cercavi tra l'erba le parole
[You were looking to the words in the grass] by Roberto Marino Masini

Roberto Marino Masini, Cercavi tra l'erba le parole
L'Arcolaio, I codici del '900, N.7, Milano, 2009

0

P.I.O. at Frieze Art Fair - London

2009-10-09T17:40:00.012+02:00

0

present
Open Calla project by Brina Thurston
for 'Impossible Exchange'

featuring
P.I.O. [Perfect Italian Obsession]

P.I.O. [Perfect Italian Obsession]2009
c-print on plexiglas
17x15cm© Michele Drascek

Within the framework of Frieze Projects at the 2009 edition of Frieze Art Fair, New York-based artist Brina Thurston present Open Call, as part of the project 'Impossible Exchange' by the curatorial team Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado.

Brina Thurston's project considers the ostensibly democratic process by which art institutions invite artists to submit works to be considered for exhibition, but in which many factors other than quality and merit operate. Transporting what happens behind closed doors to a public arena, Brina Thurston queries the existing logic of open calls by providing exposure opportunities for a range of artists outside of the gallery system and shifting the power of selection to the artist.

The presentation of the selected works will take place at the booth of 'Impossible Exchange' at Frieze Art Fair, 15-18 October 2009, London, UK.

http://www.friezeartfair.com/

article in Osebnosti Psihologija

2009-08-04T16:58:00.001+02:00

Osebnosti
Psihologija

section
art terapija / art terapy

article
A twentieth century girl as springtime.
by Michele Drascek

in
Osebnosti
Psihologija
stevilka 37 / august 2009
Slovenia

P.I.O. at Hackney Wicked Art Festival - LONDON

2009-07-17T15:04:00.018+02:00

present

P.I.O. [Perfect Italian Obsession]

2009

c-print on plexiglass

17x15cm

We are collapsing in the disorder and in the banality.

We are on the ragged edge.

[Riccardo Muti, orchestra conductor]

Italy runs the risk to turn into a cultural Disneyland.

[Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek director]

This is a work on the special case of the current Italian Prime Minister. The Italian Prime Minister represents and strengthens the concept of macchietta, the worldwide typical and stereotyped image of the Italian people.

He is a cultural obsession.

He is a political obsession: 3rd time Prime Minister.

He is a psychological obsession: the firm belief to be in the right and to do the right thing.

He is a behavioural obsession: the known international gaffes.

He is an obsession for himself: the unlimited need of power of a self-made man.

The image that I choose is a representative posture of the power.

The blurring of the portrait is the consequence of his obsessions which brings to loose the contact with the Real. And it is the consequence of his cultural, political, psychological and behavioural way of acting, so unreal that it is quite difficult by this time to recognize it like possible.

This work communicate how deep is the impact of the Italian Prime Minister personal behaviour and way of govern the Country on the outside general perception of the Country itself and, moreover, of the Italian people.

It isn’t funny anymore. It is a theatrically tragic situation.

Hackney Wicked Art Festival
"The most vital art event of the summer"
NY Arts Magazine

Various locations around Hackney Wick
E9 and Fish Island, E3
LONDON
http://www.hackneywicked.com/

article in Osebnosti Psihologija

2009-07-06T16:52:00.001+02:00

Osebnosti
Psihologija

section
art terapija / art terapy

article
The secret of Heliogabalus.
by Michele Drascek

in
Osebnosti
Psihologija
stevilka 36 / july 2009
Slovenia

article in Osebnosti Psihologija

2009-06-01T16:48:00.002+02:00

Osebnosti
Psihologija

section
art terapija / art terapy

article
The quintessence of Van Gogh thoughts.
by Michele Drascek

in
Osebnosti
Psihologija
stevilka 35 / june 2009
Slovenia

DIVA at Škuc Gallery

2009-05-28T00:04:00.013+02:00

DIVA at Škuc Gallery
A study exhibition of DIVA Station,
a physical and web archive of video art

Škuc Gallery
28 May-20 June 2009

Opening event
(lecture, presentation, discussion):
Thursday, 28 May at 7pm
Škuc Gallery, Stari trg 21, Ljubljana

A study exhibition entitled DIVA at Škuc Gallery showcases the DIVA Station archive of SCCA-Ljubljana, presenting it as a 'live archive'. It includes an educational programme, practical demonstrations, theoretical contributions, representative video works, curatorial selections and international collaboration, and also presents theoretical, practical and artistic aspects of audio-visual archives of contemporary art.

Including the video documentary
Truths - Genders - Participations
post-production and editing by Michele Drascek
produced during the laboratorium of curatorial practices
Curator as a Translator of Theory into Practice
[see post Curator as translator of Theory into Practice, April 2009]

more on:
http://www.scca-ljubljana.si/news-en_09-10.htm
http://www.galerija.skuc-drustvo.si/index.html
g

article on Osebnosti Psihologija

2009-05-01T15:43:00.000+02:00

g
g
Osebnosti
Psihologija

section
art terapija / art terapy

article
Pogled skozi umetnikovo okno
The Artist Window
by Michele Drascek

in
Osebnosti
Psihologija
stevilka 34 / may 2009
Slovenia

Curator as a Translator of Theory into Practice - Workshop participation

2009-04-30T13:22:00.009+02:00

c c

SCCA - LJUBLJANA Center for Contemporary Art

WORLD OF ART, School of Contemporary Art
Year 2008/09
Laboratorium of curatorial practices

Suzana Milevska
Curator as a Translator of Theory into Practice
Workshop in four parts

April 10-13, 2009
SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

The four day long workshop will try to show how important is the relation between contemporary curating and theoretical discourses and how important it is that the position of contemporary curator is epistemologically explained. With the term translation (instead of ‘use’) we emphasize the awareness of limitations which occur when theoretical concepts are used as an excuse/advocacy of the curatorial choice of models, strategies and relationships instead of using this concepts as starting points for a self-critical reflection on art and curatorial choices.

The workshop will try to give an answer to the following questions:

whether theory confines curating or enables more innovative curatorial models
whether one of the roles of contemporary art curators, to address complex and socially relevant questions, produces more versatile and contextually sensitive truth when theoretical models are consulted
how the process of translation of various theoretical, cultural, and artistic concepts into specific projects embrace and promote the pedagogical and epistemological responsibility
how to apply theory in curating without giving to it primary role
how to intertwine theory and issues that stem out of everyday life

more on:
http://www.scca-ljubljana.si/report-en_09_02.htm
http://www.worldofart.org/aktualno/archives/214

Suzana Milevska:
http://www.worldofart.org/aktualno/laboratorij/voditeljice-delavnic#suzana
c
c

article on Osebnosti Psihologija

2009-04-15T10:13:00.005+02:00

m
Osebnosti
Psihologija

section
art terapija / art terapy

article
Soncno nedeljsko popoldne
A sunny Sunday afternoon
by Michele Drascek

in
Osebnosti
Psihologija
stevilka 33 / april 2009
Slovenia

LAND 5B23 in BORDER - Milano

2009-03-18T16:13:00.009+01:00

PRESENT

FOUR PROPOSALS ON THE BORDER

BETWEEN REALITY AND VIRTUALITY

Introduction by Antonio Caronia (philosophy of virtual worlds) and Stefano Lazzari (cross-media technologies)
Opening of Marco Cadioli's cross-worlds exhibition “Non ho paura / I am not afraid”.
Premiere of Michele Drascek’s "LAND 5B23” and Marco Cadioli’s “Der Neue Wanderer” videos.
Live video streaming of this and other Border events.

Michele Drascek LAND 5B23 on Border.fotoup.net:

http://border.fotoup.net/_partecipanti/46/michele-drascek

The exhibition and videos will be visitable/watchable in Real Life ans Second Life until April 5, 2009:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Decoder/42/48/2

The “Four Proposals” by ShaKe-Decoder are part of Border project, curated by Silvia Moro:

http://border.fotoup.net/

BORDER press conference in Milano

2009-03-06T15:48:00.019+01:00

BORDER
paths through the concept of Borderline

Press Conference
18th March 2009
11.30 am
Arci Bellezza
Milano

http://border.fotoup.net/

"The hidden man of the heart" in Byblos Art Gallery

2009-03-03T16:27:00.011+01:00

PRESENT

Michele Drascek & Maja Slavec

dHo Kryptos tes kardias anthrophos*
[The hidden man of the heart]

in

Byblos Art Gallery
Verona

Brides on Tour exhibition

opening
8 March 2009
at 7pm
http://www.byblosartgallery.it/

[* refer to post 2008 - March]

BIOGRAPHY

2009-03-01T23:00:00.009+01:00

The use of painting and light is a fundamental element of Michele Drascek’s artistic language. The artist spaces from works of art where the neon light is the bearing element, to paintings which colour creates bright sources within the painting itself. While observing Drascek’s works of art we understand how the attention, the formal research and the intellectual depth merge perfectly to reach a balanced result with a clear message to the spectator.
Giovanna Felluga

1974 born in Gorizia, Italia.
Lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Graduate in Pedagogical Studies, University of Trieste: degree on Methods for Contemporary Art Workshop. Planning, coordination and leading of workshop in 47th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition.

Selected solo exhibitions
2007
314/317/318 Università Popolare degli Studi di Trieste, Trieste
Against the motorized regime of speed Galleria Regionale d'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Spazzapan, Gradisca d'Isonzo, Gorizia
Interval Italijanski inštitut za kulturo v Sloveniji, Ljubljana
2006
Insomnia Antico Foledôr Boschetti della Torre, Manzano, Udine
2005
Something Blue Minimarte, Gorizia
2004
Caelatura 47thfloor Creativity addicted, Roma
Dieci Equilibri, Gorizia
2002
Quel gaudio luminoso / del silenzio delle cose Equilibri, Gorizia

Selected group exhibitions
2009
Brides on Tour, Byblos Art Gallery, Verona
2008
Aequadorlab V.3, Espacio Arte Actual FLACSO, Quito, Ecuador
Against the Unknowns SPAC Public Space of Contemporary Art, Buttrio, Udine
2007
The Eagle and the Swan. The Mith of the Night in Contemporary Art Primo Piano Livingallery, Lecce
X. International Fine Artis Colony Krizanke Exhibition Ljubljanski Grad, Ljubljana
2006
Genius and Madness Primo Piano Livingallery, Lecce
Arhipelag Contemporary Art Festival Nova Gorica, Gorizia
2004
Dnevi poezije in vina Palazzo Lantieri, Gorizia
Incontri a Mezzana San Pietro al Natisone, Udine
2003
La stanza e le foglie Musei Provinciali di Borgo Castello, Gorizia
Di.Fronte Mostovna Kulturni center, Nova Gorica
Filosofia e Arte Centro San Francesco, Cividale del Friuli, Udine
2002
Presente Futuro Palazzo Frisacco, Tolmezzo, Udine
Arte e Città Galleria Regionale d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Spazzapan, Gradisca d’Isonzo, Gorizia
2001
Omaggio a Gorizia. Umetniki Gorici Kulturni Center Lojze Bratuz, Gorizia
1998
Contemporanea Sodobna Umetnost ’98 Galleria Regionale d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Spazzapan, Gradisca d’Isonzo, Gorizia

Projects
2008
What is white? notebook project. January 15, 2008 - May 15, 2008
Simultaneous circulation project in all entire Balkan territory
(in progress)
Whatever happens. The poetry of the Unknown
Light source mobile installation / photographic and photo reportage project (different locations, in progress)
2007
Against the motorized regime of speed site specific installation project
Omissis 07 Festival of Performing Art
Contemporary Art Gallery Luigi Spazzapan, Gradisca d’Isonzo, Gorizia (Italia)
production: mattatoioscenico [www.mattatoioscenico.com]
Workshop planning for Europoly. The European Identity Trading Game by Dejan Kaludjerovic
Cittadellarte Pistoletto Foundation, LoveDifference, Castello di Rivoli Didactic Department, European Cultural Foundation
Biella (Torino), Italia
2006
What is born from what Workshop on creative processes for responsible social transformation (involves Slovenian and Italian artistic reality)
Cittadellarte Pistoletto Foundation, Love Difference, Modidi, Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia
Gorizia (Italia) and Nova Gorica (Slovenia)
Don't be scared to care. Get Involved! project
in Arhipelag Festival of Contemporary Art, Nova Gorica (Slovenia) and Gorizia (Italia)
Placard for Nova Gorica Railway Station (Slovenia) and T-shirt photographic project
1999
Kaki Tree Project
“Revive Time" Kaki Tree Project Executive Committee, XLVII Biennale of Modern Art in Venice
Obaraki, Japan and Venice, Italia
Creative workshop planning and coordination

Publications

2008
- The gesture of the artist
Drustvo Vita Activa
Ljubljana - Slovenia, April 2008
- Da cosa nasce cosa...what to co-operate on? New connections between Gorizia and Nova Gorica
Progetto Arte. Journal 11, 2006
Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto
Fondazione Pistoletto Onlus Editore
Torino - Italia, 2007
2007
- Pilar Rainoldi, The Culture in the New Europe: Slovenia (abstract and interview)
Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM
Facoltà di Scienze della Comunicazione e dello Spettacolo
Milano, 2007
2004
- Michele Drascek: Caelatura
Arte/Mostre, Aprile/Roma
Revolt Magazine n.3/2004
- Arte & Parte
Isonzo-Soca. Giornale di frontiera-Casopis na meji
n.59, Ottobre-Novembre 2004. Gorizia-Gorica
- Vetrina Underground
Società - L'Espresso. Settimanale di Politica Cultura Economia
n.17, anno L, 29 aprile 2004
2002
- Frantumi. Raccolta poetica di collisioni e lontananze
Fragment. Poems collection of collisions and distances
Sottomondo, Edizioni la Quercia, Gorizia, 2002
- Gorizia_Gorica. Documenti d’arte nell’Isontino dal secondo dopoguerra
Gorizia_Gorica. Art documents after the Second World War
Stampa Graphart, Trieste, 2002
2001
- Michele Drascek, Alla Biennale di Venezia. L’albero di Bruno / In the Venice Biennal. Bruno's tree
Il Pepe Verde. Rivista di letture e letterature per ragazzi, Centro Servizi Culturali del Comune di Anagni (Frosinone), Arti Grafiche Tofani, Alatri (Frosinone), n.8/2001
- Junichi Shioda, Michele Drascek’s Workshop. “The Kaki Tree”
Whither The Arts? Japanase Pavillon, the 48th Venice Biennale, June 12 – November 7, 1999, The Japan Foundation © 2001, Tokyo
- Premio Arte e Citta’ 2001. I luoghi dell’acqua
Art and City Prize 2001. Water places
Quaderni a Quadri, Amici della Galleria Spazzapan, Gradisca d’Isonzo (Gorizia), 2001
- 10 days in Venezia
GQ Japan. 05 May 2001
Tokyo, Japan, 2001
2000
- Videogong. XV Film Video Monitor
Edizioni Kinoatelje Gorizia, 2000
- Vom Meer bis zum Alpengeist macht der deutsche Gebirsoldat
VideoKids 2000 vhs
Arci Nuova Associazione, Udine
1999
- Opere svelate. Dalla storia della Galleria Regionale d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Spazzapan
Disclosed works. From the history of Regional Contemporary Art Luigi Spazzapan
Stella Arti Grafiche, Trieste, 1999
- Michele Drascek, Comparing writer and painter. Among woods and butterflies
Il Pepe Verde. Rivista di letture e letterature per ragazzi, Centro Servizi Culturali del Comune di Anagni (Frosinone), Arti Grafiche Tofani, Alatri (Frosinone), n.2/1999
1998
- Uomini Urbani. Urbani Ljudje
Via Libera, Stampa Cartotecnica Isontina, Anno V, n. 5, Aprile 1998
- Contemporanea Sodobna Umetnost ’98. Avventure d’arte lungo il confine
Comtemporanea Sodobna Umetnost '98. Art adventures along the border
Edizioni della Laguna, Gorizia, 1998

MD new article on OSEBNOSTI magazine

2009-03-01T00:01:00.000+01:00

m
Osebnosti
Psihologija

present
the new section
art terapija / art terapy

with the article
Beli kanu
White Canoe
by Michele Drascek

in
Osebnosti
Psihologija
stevilka 32 / marec 2009
Slovenia
m
m

AestOvest seminar intervention on web

2009-01-15T18:57:00.012+01:00

The intervention

Experiences confrontation:

Contemporary Art projects

AestOvest.
Trespassing in Europe.

The challenges of a common area.

now on web:d

http://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/article/articleview/10515/1/1/

d [refer to post Michele Drascek intervention in AestOvest seminar]

Video BORDERLAND in AestOvest DVD

2009-01-12T15:00:00.025+01:00

Osservatorio sui Balcani
European Commission's Directorate-General
for Education and Culture
Program "Europe for the Citizens"

present

AestOvest. Storia, memoria e attualità

di una terra di confine.

dAestOvest. History, memory and news

about a border area.

The multimedia DVD ToEastWest, a program of study covering the history, the places of memory and the present european border, produced for Italian high school students.
Includes the video documentary BORDERLAND [refer to post BORDERLAND in ESPACIO ARTE ACTUAL - QUITO].

radio live broadcast interview

2008-12-19T08:00:00.006+01:00

d
d
d
d

Art from Slovenia: Maja Slavec SITUAKTCIJA

2008-11-03T13:00:00.039+01:00

Wednesday 3 December 2008 at 6pm

opening

Maja Slavec

s i t u a k t c i j a

curated by Michele Drascek

p
Contemporary Art Space Camere Chiare

Università degli Studi di Trieste

Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione

Via Principe di Montfort 3, Trieste
untill 20 December 2008

from Monday to Friday, 9am - 7pm

more on Maja Slavec: http://maja-slavec.blogspot.com/

p
Università degli Studi di Trieste website:
http://webnews.units.it/pagina.asp?id=432&tipoogg=0&lang=2&tipo=1

Review by Michele Drascek

Maja Slavec
S I T U A K T C I J A

Maja Slavec dedicated one whole year to the artistic project S i t u a k t c i j a. The artist followed the life of some women in them everyday activities, taking part in the simple actions of the day like privileged observer, but not intrusive. So we can see women portrayed in interior spaces of the house like kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms; but also during passing moments from room to room, or external from housing spaces. In both cases, the woman is alone.
Maja Slavec inquires into the real life and capture the situation (in Slovenian situacija) in which the woman is alone with herself. These are instants of intimate life (akt, naked; also in a broad sense) in which emerge subtly femininity and eroticism. Here, however, is completely absent any intention that leads to think of a voyeuristic look into intimacy. The woman isn’t a potential erotic object for outer observer.
In fact the artist deepens the topic of the self-perception of femininity and eroticism. And she speaks of the fear to loose this self-perception. In her shoots, consequently, we can recognize a latent sadness. In this way the photographic memory of S i t u a k t c i j a record also sadness, like a quality of experience.
The artist specifies “There’s a sort of poetry in being sad. Sadness is poetic”. If poetry has a certain inclination for emptiness [Iosif Brodskij], S i t u a k t c i j a describes this inclination tactfully, succeeding in express exactly the poetry, not only the semantic, of the situations.
Just for this inclination to poetry built in the project concept, Maja Slavec photography, although portray real life moments, is not purely realistic like greater part of contemporary situation photography: it meet precise formal and aesthetic fundamental rules (composition, light) maintaining yet the absence of artifice in the representation of reality.
The final result is a photographic series in which, absolutely, there isn’t narrative will.
S i t u a k t c i j a brings in itself the quality of immediacy of the real life.

Maja Slavec
S I T U A K T C I J A

S i t u a k t c i j a è un progetto artistico che ha impegnato Maja Slavec per un anno intero.
L’artista ha seguito la vita di alcune donne nelle loro attività di ogni giorno, partecipando da osservatrice privilegiata, ma non intrusiva, alle azioni più semplici del quotidiano. Vediamo così donne ritratte in interni come cucine, bagni, camere; ma anche immortalate nei momenti di passaggio da un ambiente all’altro, esterni allo spazio abitativo. In entrambi i casi, la donna è sola.
Maja Slavec indaga la vita reale e cattura le situazioni (in sloveno situacija) in cui la donna è sola con sé stessa. Sono istanti di vita intima (akt, nudo; anche in senso lato) nei quali emergono sottilmente la femminilità e l’erotismo. Qui, però, è totalmente assente ogni intenzione che lasci pensare a uno sguardo voyeuristico sull’intimità e la donna non è oggetto erotico potenziale per l’esterno.
L’artista, infatti, approfondisce il tema dell’auto-percezione della femminilità e dell’erotismo. E parla anche della paura di perdere questa percezione. Nei suoi scatti, di conseguenza, si riconosce una latente tristezza. La memoria fotografica di S i t u a k t c i j a registra così anche la tristezza. E la registra come una qualità dell’esperienza.
L’artista stessa precisa: “C’è una sorta di poesia nell’essere tristi. La tristezza è poetica”.
Se la poesia ha una certa inclinazione per il vuoto [Iosif Brodskij], S i t u a k t c i j a descrive questa inclinazione con tatto, riuscendo ad esprimere appunto la poesia, non solamente la semantica, delle situazioni ritratte.
Proprio per questa inclinazione al poetico insita all’idea progettuale, la fotografia di Maja Slavec, nonostante ritragga momenti di vita reale, non è puramente realistica come maggior parte della fotografia contemporanea di situazione: risponde a precisi canoni formali ed estetici (composizione, luce) mantenendo però l’assenza di artificio nella rappresentazione della realtà.
Il risultato finale è una serie fotografica in cui non c’è assolutamente volontà narrativa. Sono scatti che portano in sé la qualità dell’immediatezza della vita reale.

Editorial on Exibart

2008-11-03T12:30:00.016+01:00

t
t
Michele Drascek subeditor for Slovenia on Exibart, italian contemporary art magazine.

In the international column Around, which concerns the foreign capital cities, a review on Mesec Fotografije.

On Exibart.com:
http://www.exibart.com/notizia.asp?IDNotizia=25274&IDCategoria=200

more on Mesec Fotografije:
http://www.mesecfotografije.si/

Art from Slovenia: Urša Vidic "Beyoned"

2008-11-03T12:00:00.063+01:00

tt
tt
tt

Friday 7 November 2008 at 6pm

opening

Urša Vidic

“Beyoned”

curated by Michele Drascek

Contemporary Art Space Camere Chiare
Università degli Studi di Trieste
Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione
Via Principe di Montfort 3, Trieste

untill 28 November 2008
from Monday to Friday, 9am - 7pm

more on Urša Vidic: http://uvslike.blogspot.com/

Università degli Studi di Trieste website: http://webnews.units.it/pagina.asp?id=380&tipoogg=0&lang=2&tipo=1

Urša Vidic is an artist of Galerija Ganes Pratt, Ljubljana (Slovenia)http://www.ganes.si/index_files/Ganes_Pratt.htm

Review by Michele Drascek

Urša Vidic
“Beyoned”

In her work, Urša Vidic opens the question about relation between biological and social gender. “Beyoned” is a made-up word coined in order to efficiently illustrate the artist’s idea; it describes revolt and a desire to progress in understanding of sexual identities in the western culture; to rise above the biological and cultural determination in the name of respect.

The work presented at this exhibition is a result of intense human body research. The subject is portrait with extreme precision, without seeming morbid or over-sensual. The artist transforms a photograph onto canvas, reinterprets its meaning and shapes into a sophisticated oil painting. That is why her paintings differ from the mimic portrait photography.

Even though the subject of her paintings is the human body, we can describe them as non-figurative. And it is true; the body extends, stretches and disappears. The details disintegrate until they are merged with a single layer of monochrome color. In this way it is almost impossible to identify the gender of the body. It becomes sublime.

Through researching her own physiognomy, the artist questions her identity, seeking answers to diametricality between the male and the female and asks what happens when we go beyond the gender determination and transform into one. By annihilating the gender differences we reach egalitarism. Or as the artist puts it: “It’s a fantasy and at the same time a realistic appeal towards unity between different social genders and towards respect between them.”

What we see on her canvas are outlines of human bodies and their organs. Most of all we notice the basic presence of hands painted in exquisite precision. The hands are grabbing skin and research various parts and organs of the body. With all this, it seems as if they are trying to understand, discover, almost penetrate, devour and possibly posses the bodies, which is impossible. We can also sense care and restlessness in her paintings. Canvases with their cold composition resemble scientific research of hybrids, but on the other hand, a strong emotional presence of the artist is sensed. The desire to communicate about her research through painting leads to phenomenology.

Urša Vidic
“Beyoned”

“Beyoned” è un lemma inesistente, un voluto errore grammaticale.
La parola è composta dall’ingelse beyond (oltre, al di là) e one (uno).
Da artista seriamente coinvolta nelle problematiche di genere, Urša Vidic propone un titolo che è un atto di resistenza, ma anche di volontà di superamento della cultura del sesso dominante – quello maschile – nella cultura occidentale: andare al di là del genere, accettare i generi differenti nel nome del rispetto.

Per questo motivo le opere presentate da Urša Vidic sono frutto di un intenso lavoro di ricerca sul corpo. Un soggetto pittorico trattato con estrema cura e attenzione al dettaglio, ma senza cadere nel morboso o nel sensuale.
Nel puntiglioso processo di produzione delle opere l’artista parte dalla fotografia per poi interpretarla e trasformarla sulla tela in raffinate pitture a olio. Pitture che però divergono dal reale ritratto fotografico.
Nonostante il soggetto sia il corpo, si può parlare di una pittura non-figurativa. Infatti il corpo si allunga, si distorge e svanisce, la pittura perde il dettaglio sino a diventare un’unica campitura di colore in cui è impossibile riconoscere l’identità di genere: il corpo diventa sublime.

Utilizzando la fisicità della Persona, l’artista si domanda cosa sia l’identità, cosa sia la diversità tra uomo e donna, e cosa accade con la perdita del genere (beyond) e la successiva trasformazione in un’unica unità (one). L’annullamento dell’identità corporea porta a una sorta di egualitarismo. L’artista descrive perciò queste opere come “un appello fantastico-idealistico a un rapporto egualitario tra i sessi fondato sul rispetto”.

Concretamente, quello che vediamo sulle tele sono porzioni estese di corpi, interferenze tra corpi. E la fondamentale presenza delle mani, dipinte molto dettagliatamente, che stringono i corpi e la loro pelle per investigarli. Di più: per percepire, scoprire, quasi penetrare, inghiottire e forse prendere possesso – un possesso impossibile – del corpo.
Si riconosce un disagio, un’inquietudine. Le tele sono simili a freddi fotogrammi di una ricerca scientifica sugli ibridi.
Si percepisce la partecipazione emotiva dell’artista. Il bisogno di comunicare la propria ricerca attraverso la produzione pittorica. Ne esce una fenomenologia.

Urša Vidic
“Beyoned”

"Beyoned" je beseda, ki ne obstaja, in je skovana na željo umetnice. Sestavljena je iz angleške besede beyoned, ki pomeni onkraj, preko in besede one, ki jo prevajamo kot eden, enak. Ker Urša Vidic v svojih delih odpira vprašanja, ki se dotikajo odnosa med biološkim in družbenim spolom, predlaga naslov, ki je sočasno delo odpora in hkrati želje, da bi napredovali v razumevanju naših spolnih identitet v zahodni kulturi; dvigniti se nad biološko in družbeno determiniranostjo v imenu spoštovanja.

Delo, ki ga na tej razstavi predstavlja Urša Vidic, je rezultat intenzivnega raziskovanja človeskega telesa. Slikarski subjekt obdeluje z ekstremno natančnostjo, ne da bi pri tem delovalo morbidno ali prekomerno čutno. Med umetniškim ustavrjanjem se umetnica poslužuje fotografije, ki jo na platnu na novo pomensko interpretira in preoblikuje v prefinjeno oljno sliko. Zato se slike razlikujejo od mimetične portretne fotografije.

Kljub temu, da je subjekt slikanja človeško telo, lahko govorimo o njenih slikah kot o nefigurativnih. In res, telo se razteza, podaljšuje in izginja. Detajli na slikah se razkrajajo, dokler se ne združijo v en sam nanos monokromne barve. Na ta način le še s težavo prepoznavamo identiteto spola. Telo postaja sublimno.

Preko raziskovanja lastne fizionomije, umetnica postavlja pod vprašaj njeno identiteto, išče odgovore na diametralnost med moškim in žensko in se sprašuje, kaj se zgodi ko se dvignemo nad spolno določenostjo (beyond) in se transformiramo v enost (one). Z razvrdnotenjem razlik med spoloma, pridemo do egalitarizma. Ali kot pravi umetnica sama: “Gre za fantazijski in hkrati idelastični poziv k enotnsoti med različnimi družbenimi spoli in k spoštovanju med njimi.”

Kar lahko vidimo na njenih platnih so obrisi človeških teles in njihovi organi. Predvsem je opaziti bazično prezenco rok, ki so naslikane z izredno natančnostjo. Roke grabijo kožo in raziskujejo različne dele, organe telesa. Pri vsem tem se zdi, kot da skušajo razumeti, odkrivati, skoraj penetrirati, požirati in mogoče posedovati telesa, kar pa je nemogoče.
Na njenih slikah lahko zaznamo tudi skrb in nemir. Platna spominjajo s svojim hladnim kompozicijskim kadriranjem, na znanstveno raziskovanje hibridov, po drugi strani pa je čutiti močno emocionalno prisotnost umetnice. Želja po komunikaciji o svojem lastnem raziskovanju preko produkcije slikarstva, pripelje do fenomenologie.

On newspaper:
Il Piccolo, cultural page Università, Thursday 6 November 2008

European Art Masters 2008 - Spain

2008-09-01T08:00:00.034+02:00

Supported by Presidency of the European Union

Major of the City of Sevilla

Major of the Real Alkazar of Sevilla

Ambassador of Republic of Slovenia in Spain

present

European Art Masters 2008
Manuel Chabrera and Tomo Vran

presented by

Michele Drascek

25 September 2008
at 8pm
Real Alcazar de Sevilla

Sevilla, Spain

BORDERLAND in ESPACIO ARTE ACTUAL - QUITO

2008-07-01T22:00:00.023+02:00

New video documentary BORDERLAND, recorded in June 2008 for Aequadorlab, in Espacio Arte Actual, Space for Contemporary Art in Quito, Ecuador. Espacio Arte Actual is the ideal place to turn into practice the idea of favourable meetings between cultural producers, academics and members of the civilian society.
More: http://www.flacso.org.ec/html/arte_actual.html

B O R D E R L A N D

BORDERLAND is a video documentary of what remain of the borderline and the frontier posts between Italy and Slovenia in Gorizia and Nova Gorica after 21st December 2007, date of the entrance of Slovenia in Schengen Accord area.

Borderland in Espacio Arte Actual

The video show the different frontier posts located on the border: the frontier in the centre of the city, that was before pedestrian precinct, became the heavy road traffic way that cross the borderline; the duty commercial frontier, where before all the trucks had to stop, became a fluent traffic road; the frontier that present houses between the Italian and Slovenian frontier posts, so houses that were inside the no-man’s land; the frontier on the route of a country street, that we can recognize only because of an lifted up border barrier presence; the frontier on the railway; the frontier on the top of a hill in a small village or in a valley outside the city; the frontier neglected in the middle of the countryside. Sometimes the fence of the border is still there. Sometimes the borderline is unrecognizable. No one more is standing guard over the border, so the road blocks are empty: new non-places. The video on purpose start with the view of the tangible borderline in the city and end with the view of the abandoned frontier post in the countryside: it’s the same journey – by images – of the history of the border: a border that is vanishing.

BORDERLAND
still from video
production Michele Drascek
photography Maja Slavec
thanks to Ajda Es

AEQUADORLAB WORKSHOP IN FLACSO ECUADOR

2008-06-02T10:00:00.064+02:00

Michele Drascek
curator

for

AEQUATORLAB workshop

FLACSO
Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales

25th - 26th June 2008
Quito, Ecuador

Aequatorlab is a project by a group of Latin American artists whose main concern is the relationship between art as cultural production and social issues such as environment, human rights, heritage, alternative political spaces, to name a few. Aequadorlab workshop and exhibition in Quito concerns the topics territory - society - frontiers - geographic imaginary and them relations.

Curator for these topics that concern Italian-Slovenian ex-border, Michele Drascek introduced to the partecipants this important hinge between Ovest and Est Europe with different instruments:

> a short writing on the history of the border till the European Union presidency of Slovenia (1st January - 31st June 2008);

> the showing of three video of the director Anja Medved and produced by Kinoatelje* on the cities Gorizia-Nova Gorizia, the border between them, history and stories:
Moja Meja / Il mio confine (My border), Mesto na travniku / La citta' sul prato (The City on the meadow), Sesivalnica spomina /Ricuciture di memorie (Memories restitched);

> the introduction and the presentation of an extract of the book Confini di celluloide by Moreno Zago, edited by Kinoatelje: a book on the border between cinema and society, fiction and reality to understand the complex life on the frontiers;

> Michele Drascek documentary Borderland - recorded for Aequadorlab in June - on what remain of the borderline and the frontier posts between Gorizia and Nova Gorica after 21st December 2007, date of the entrance of Slovenia in Schengen Accord area.

more info:
http://aequatorlab.blogspot.com/
http://www.flacso.org.ec/html/arte_actual.html

*kinoatelje:
http://www.nostrocine.co.uk/kinoatelje/site/html/php/index.php?mode=showcontent&id=58

news in elcomercio on-line review:
http://www.elcomercio.com/noticiaEC.asp?id_noticia=206355&id_seccion=7

Michele Drascek intervention in AestOvest seminar

2008-06-01T10:00:00.002+02:00

European Commission
Observatory on the Balkans
Forum Trentino for Peace and Human Rights
Automomous Province of Trento - Council Department for International Solidarity
International Institute Jacques Maritain
Culture Club Istro Veneta "Istria"

present

AestOvest.

Trespassing in Europe.
The challenges of a common area.

24th June 2008
9:30 am
Regional Council, Sala Tiziano Tessitori
Piazza Oberdan 5, Trieste (Italia)

PROGRAM:

9:30 am - Introduction

LUISA CHIODI, Director Observatory on the Balkans - Rovereto (TN)

9:45 am - Salutations

LIVIO DORIGO, President Culture Club Istro Veneta “Istria”, Trieste
WALTER GODINA, Town councillor for Community Politics , Province of Trieste
ENRICO CONTE, Director Culture Departement, University and Research, Municipality of Trieste

10:15 am- The challenges of a common area
Moderator: FRANCESCA VANONI, Observatory on the Balkans

MARTA VERGINELLA, historian, University of Lubiana
GIAN MATTEO APUZZO, sociologist, University of Trieste
MILAN BUFON, geographer, Coast University - Koper/Capodistria
EMILIO COCCO, researcher, University of Teramo
MILAN RAKOVAC, writer

1 pm- Buffet

2:30 pm - Experiences confrontation
MELITA RICHTER, sociologist

ALEŠ DOKTORIC, President of Kinoatelje - Gorizia
MICHELE DRASCEK, artist and curator

3:45 pm- Presentation of the multimedia DVD

DAVIDE SIGHELE, journalist, Observatory on the Balkans

5 pm - Closing

Free entrance

INFO:
Observatory on the Balkans
Piazza San Marco 7
38068 ROVERETO
Tel: 0464 424230
Fax: 0464 424299
Email: http://it.mc276.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=eventi@osservatoriobalcani.org
Web: http://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/

http://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/article/frontpage/161
http://appuntamenti.osservatoriobalcani.org/content/view/full/7360

video of the intervention on web:

http://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/article/articleview/10515/1/1/

NEW INTERVIEW

2008-05-03T22:00:00.031+02:00

Lubiana, capitale culturale.
Michele Drascek,

un artista goriziano fra due paesi.

Lubiana, cultural capital city.
Michele Drascek,
artist from Gorizia among two countries.

interview by Greta Sclaunich

New interview in an italian newspaper about art system in Slovenia and Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lubiana contemporary art situation and next projects like artist and curator.
In Il Messaggero Veneto, Friday 29th May, 2008.

Non clamor, sed amor in ArteIngenua collection

2008-05-02T22:00:00.007+02:00

Non clamor, sed amor

digital print on photographic paper

100 x 70 cm.

New work selected in First International Competition ARTEINGENUA Prize 2008:
IMPACT – ART / place + relationships

Now in ArteIngenua collection in Brescia, Italy.

The work is about the artist and his relation with art system. The impact could be the meeting among the artist - his works of art - and the contemporary art system. In this case the meeting could create a contact that develop itself like a mutual relation. But the artist depends on an environment - contemporary art territory - with its structures and strategies. An environment that often becames a desert. The artist, sometimes abandoned [the word "desert" derives from the latin "desere" = "to abandon"] in a complex social system, feels himself in the centre of a non-place. In this elsewhere, in spite of it or maybe because of it, the artist is anyway pushed to discover and invent, to express and narrate, to live and love through the artistic production. He is pushed by the will, the dedication, the engagement, symbolized, with simplicity but also with strength, by the neuralgic centre of human body: the heart. The title Non clamor, sed amor is a sentence by Tommaso da Celano (13th century): "Non clamor, sed amor / non vox, sed votum / non cordula, sed cor" [not clamour sed love / not rumour but dedication / not violence but intelligence]. The photography declares and unfolds the sentence. It's a very demanding declaration that the artist makes to himself. A declaration that, at the same time, is against to another concept of impact: the impact of the surprising istant; the impact of the shockvertising in a kind of artistic production that wants to upset to call people's attention; the impact of the "impact makers" artists; the impact like reduction of artistic production into astonishment.

ART IN LJUBLJANA (click for an exctract)

2008-05-01T12:00:00.006+02:00

CultureHunting + ScandicciCultura Firenze + GingerZone
present

Art in Lubiana
a video by Lorenzo Mazza

CulturHunting, a project about the artistic reality of the young european scene, begin with the presentation of the video Art in Ljubljana, including Michele Drascek interview recorded in Ljubljana, December 2007.

Friday 9 May, 2008
at 9 pm
GingerZone,
Piazza Togliatti, Scandicci (Firenze)

http://www.gingerzone.net/
http://www.myspace.com/ginger_zone

Isolated figures (Women)

2008-04-28T23:00:00.010+02:00

The subject, the gesture, the wave, the position. A new series of mixed technique paintings to explore the bodily movements and attitudes out of the context and the environment: Isolated figures. The first series portray different women and them gestures - of everyday life or more symbolic - put in a empty-space surroundings. A sense of emptiness is not associated as effect of the black blackground, but rather the probable image of a context that the picture doesn't describe.

I assume a passive attitude. And I wait.
Isolated figures #1
mixed technique on canvas
20 x 15 cm.

Isolated figures (Women) #2
mixed technique on canvas
15 x 20 cm.

Weasel out
Isolated figures (Women) #3
mixed technique on paper
12 x 15 cm.

The thinker
Isolated figures (Women) #4
mixed technique on paper
10 x 7 cm.

Untitled
Isolated figures (Women) #5
mixed technique on canvas
15 x 20 cm.

Michele Drascek article for Drustvo Vita Activa

2008-04-27T23:00:00.009+02:00

The gesture of the artist.
The pediluvium of Pippa Bacca
in
Drustvo Vita Activa

The main purpose of the Association for Promotion of Equality and Plurality Vita Activa is to promote the equality of human rights and basic freedoms regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, political or other belief, ethnicity, social background, education or other personal characteristics.

Drustvo Vita Activa published Michele Drascek The gesture of the artist. The pediluvium of Pippa Bacca, an article about the performance of the Italian artist in Ljubljana, during the Brides on Tour project stop Slovenia.

link:
http://www.drustvo-vitaactiva.si/9722/496101.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*
http://www.drustvo-vitaactiva.si/59601/index.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*
http://www.drustvo-vitaactiva.si/401.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*

photo Maja Slavec

Michele Drascek

The gesture of the artist. The pediluvium of Pippa Bacca

The 31 December 2007 I received a call from Milano, so I maked Pippa's acquaitance and I started my participation in Pippa Bacca and Silvia Moro Brides on Tour project. She called me as an artist, because she was looking for the support of the artists, also to create a network amongst them. Like this I began to work like curator for the last stop of the tour in Italy, Gorizia, and for the first stop abroad, in Ljubljana. We wrote a lot of e-mails to each other, and this was another way to feel her belief: the trust in the others. This was her fundamental topic in the project. She was a trustful person and she believed that - like she said - "If I put one's trust in the people, I think I could receive good things and trust from the people". She used to travel hitchhiking in all her life and she choose to do the same for Brides on Tour: another attestation of faithfulness in the other people, in human beings and, more, in countries that lived or live conflicts. And she travelled dressed like a bride: white, light, womanly, "generator of new life equal to peace, love and purity". But Brides on Tour wasn't only travelling around dressed like brides. The foundations of the project were the performances: if Silvia Moro met people that sewed on her dress to bring with her a sign of every single city and country, Pippa Bacca met the midwifes for her washing-feet performance, a meaningfull gesture, "a tribute to the women that bring life, the ancient gesture to wash them the feet with the water and wipe them the feet with my dress voile" as she pointed out. I organized and then I saw two times this performance, in the Natural Birth Room inside the Hospital of Gorizia and in Alkatraz Galerija in Ljubljana. It was a gentle and poetic gesture; a rite - the pediluvium -indeed. The midwifes experienced at the same time the secular practice for guests in ancient civilizations and Middle Ages, and the ritual of the religious liturgy (a trasversal ritual present in different religions). Pippa poured warm water into her basin and began to wash the feet of the midwife in silence, then she started to ask to the midwife experiences, memories, feelings in her particular profession. At the end she wiped the feet with her voile and put on the feet lavender essence oil. A calm, still and deep atmosphere involved totaly the midwife. Naturally, it's come back to me at once the Gospel of John (13, 1-15): After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girdled. And yes, she really taked off the wipe that during the washing feet she girdled. This is the more strong image that I remember of Pippa Bacca. The gesture of the artist: the relation between the women bodies, the hands (to do) and the feet (to walk), the narrations. An aesthetic and human experience in a perfromance that didn't forget the ethics significance.

When she was in my home, doing needlework, I asked if she wanted to listen to some particular music: "Sì, vorrei ascoltare La Pastorale di Beethoven!" (Yes, I would like to listen to The Pastoral by Beethoven!). So I took the Symphony No. 6 in F major (Op. 68) and we listened to it. Pippa Bacca chose the music that was in principle the empirical description of her way to interpret and experience Art, in fact the composer wrote that this Symphony is "a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds".

The shock caught all of us, we were frozen in front of the news. The end of the tour was a product of the tragic meeting of the trust and the inhuman in Human Being. They say that the world needs pity. I say that immediacy is a fraud (Dietrich Bonhoffer) and therefore the end of the travel is not the end of the project: if before the project was speaking and put forward a concept of life to the people, now the project is shouting and screaming.

Against the Unknowns / Sconfini (Beyond the Borders). Paintings.

2008-03-01T23:30:00.008+01:00

A series of dyptichs for Sconfini (Beyond the Borders), a group show of five artists from five different Countries of Estern Europe curated by Giovanna Felluga, part of the exhibition Against the Unknowns in Public Space of Contemporary Art Villa Toppo Florio, Buttrio, Udine (Italia) in March 2008.
www.spacbuttrio.it/eventi/ci/ci.html

Public Space of Contemporary Art
Villa Toppo Florio

The artist presents three pictorial works, diptychs and one installation at the exhibition Sconfini - Contro Ignoti (Beyond the Borders – Against the Unknowns). Small dimensions of the paintings show the overwhelming care for the detail that the artist has been demonstrating since his early works. "The pleasure of working on small dimensions is a challenge, a clear refusal towards the art as a shock," says Drascek.
The viewer has to discover the work of art by getting closer, dedicating an adequate amount of time to perceive the energy and the message that it emanates, as if he would create an intimate and private relation with the painting. All three diptychs become small catalysers filled with preciousness and mystery. Who is the slave of corruption and the installation The Unknowns don't show themselves have been created explicitly for the exhibition. The political theme of global corruption is of great interest for the artist. Every year he confronts himself with this theme by consulting various online portals, unfortunately still not well known to a wider public, where he draws the inspiration. To convey the corruption perceptions index on a geographical level is one of the studies carried out by Transparency International (www.trasparency.org) that visually expresses the main theme of the exhibition in a clear way.
In the first painting, two images of children clash: on one hand, the malnutrition of Third World Countries compared with the obesity and the supply of “laboratory” food that is ingested daily in the western societies, on the other, two demonstrations of extreme consequences to which an inherent corruption of the global system can lead.
In other two diptychs and in the installation, moreover, all united under the same title The Unknowns don't show themselves, Michele Drascek recreated an atmosphere, a blurry environment where one can catch a glimpse of the Unknowns, perceive their presence, imagine their action, even if they stay in the twilight. The use of neon blue, as a constituent element of the installation, creates a “cooling” effect of the exhibition area that drives the observer inside a mysterious aura, in a world made of shadows and landscapes, similar to the one depicted on the panels of the work of art itself. Drascek says: "You cannot tell who is corrupted, yet one is aware of their presence that has become even habitual: known, perhaps morally condemned, but integrated, tolerated or even justified...because, like Honoré de Balzac wrote in "Father Goriot": "Corruption is the weapon of superfluous mediocrity".
Giovanna Felluga

The Unknowns don't show themselves dyptich
acrylic and oil on canvas
30 x 20 cm.

The trail of the Cirrupt dyptich
acrylic and oil on canvas
30 x 20 cm

The sons of corruption. Who is the slave of corruption? dyptich
collage, acrylic, oil and charcoal; paper on canvas
15 x 20 cm.
20 x 15 cm.

Against the Unknowns / Sconfini (Beyond the Borders). Installation.

2008-03-01T23:15:00.009+01:00

The new full-scale light installation The Unknowns don't show themselves for Sconfini (Beyond the Borders), part of the exhibition Against the Unknowns in Public Space of Contemporary Art Villa Toppo Florio, Buttrio, Udine (Italia) in March 2008.

www.spacbuttrio.it/eventi/ci/ci.html

The installation The Unknowns don't show themselves have been created explicitly for the exhibition.

Michele Drascek recreated an atmosphere, a blurry environment where one can catch a glimpse of the Unknowns, perceive their presence, imagine their action, even if they stay in the twilight. The use of neon blue, as a constituent element of the installation, creates a “cooling” effect of the exhibition area that drives the observer inside a mysterious aura, in a world made of shadows and landscapes, similar to the one depicted on the panels of the work of art itself.

Giovanna Felluga

The Unknowns don't show themselves
site specific installation
plexiglas, print, light
90 x 120 cm. each plate

The Unknowns don't show themselves
full-scale light installation

Ho kryptos tes kardias anthropos (The hidden man of the heart)

2008-03-01T23:00:00.003+01:00

Concept and development: Michele Drascek and Maja Slavec
Photography: Maja Slavec http://maja-slavec.blogspot.com/

Curator for the Brides on tour* stops in Gorizia (Italia) e Ljubljana (Slovenia), Michele Drascek, in collaboration with the photographer Maja Slavec, produced a work for the slovenian stage of the tour and for the final exhibition that will take place in Byblos Art Gallery, Verona (Italia).

Ho Kryptos tes kardias anthrophos (The hidden man of the heart) [I Pt 1,4] is a sentence that suggests to the women to take care of the hidden being that they bring inside of them. Two brides, two hidden beings.

[*Brides on tour is a unic and one-time trip of two brides thumbing through the Mediterranean area [bridesontour.fotoup.net]. Along the route they will stop to meet artists, associations , local craftswoman, museums and foundations, but also cultural and pacifist association with whom they will make some symbolic acts like the feet washing, the daily dress washing and also an interaction with them job. The purpose is to explore and raise every possible attestation with videos, photos and written diaries]

What is white? notebook project. January 15, 2008 - May 15, 2008

2008-03-01T22:00:00.006+01:00

WORK IN PROGRESS!

Materials:
WHAT IS WHITE? Notebook:
black cover, white letters on black background, 9,3 x 14,3 cm. each.
WHAT IS WHITE? T-Shirt:
white cotton, white letters on black background, size S and L.
WHAT IS WHITE? Box:
white box, white letters on black background, size derives from numbers of notebooks completed.
WHAT IS WHITE? Photographies:
colour photographies, photographic paper , 21 x 27 cm. each.

All designs of WHAT IS WHITE? notebook project is a gafo/gabrielli fabrizio design.

The very first moment I saw the topic of “WHAT IS WHITE?” Contest, I immediately took my notebook and wrote the first thing that crossed my mind: Sophie Scholl die Weiße Rose (The WHITE rose) resistance group student from Munich executed by the Gestapo in 1943 This question swiftly brought to my mind - stream of consciousness – a photo of a young female student Sophie Scholl, published in the book The White Rose which I read in my first university yearS. My mental association is one strong and complex memory. What mental associations will others activate? Before I commence my work, I write a lot. Writing is a fundamental step in my creative process. The contest raised a question, I answered in writing and the idea for the WHAT IS WHITE? Notebook project was born. The curiosity, to find out from other people what is their first association/idea/answer that comes to their mind (the idea of passing your provocation on others), making it a survey tool for Terminal00, brought me to Ljubljana. I was walking about with my first notebook, asking people to answer a query, on the spot and everywhere: in bars, libraries, during a dinner, before a concert, on the street, etc. My notebook has now a plentiful collection of impressions. The idea – already in course - is to make a small library of notebooks, linking various Balkan metropolises: in each of these cities, there will be one “WHAT IS WHITE?” notebook in circulation. Collaborators with notebooks are ready to ask the question, documenting the answers of the local people. The simultaneous circulation of notebooks in different metropolises is a part of the project idea: to cover such a wide and complex geographical, social, geopolitical and cultural area like the Balkans, with the local circulation of a traditional documenting tool like a notebook. Literally, these notebooks physically cover a geographical space! Information Technologies (email, websites, etc.) would be easier and faster to manage, but decontextualised and therefore fruitless. Then there is handwriting: every personal and peculiar mark of the interviewees, on the entire Balkan territory, which is still politically difficult, will be a part of this unique collection. What a strong metaphor! Once filled in, notebooks will be sent back by mail to the point of collection: Ljubljana, Slovenia. The notebooks will be packaged in a “WHAT IS WHITE?” box, which will be sent to London. This will represent another visual tool during the transport phase that will have an active role of asking the question, creating curiosity. The result of the project will be left to judgement directly to the public: notebooks of different origins will be exhibited in a unique small set and exposed on a white bookshelf (I will construct an hand made one), ready for consultation and reading. The challenges are numerous: with what differences – minor or relevant or more, conflicting – will answer the public to the provocation in various Balkan countries? What difficulties will the compilation of the notebook encounter? Therefore, how long will the filling in take in different metropolises? Will there be a constant recurrence of answers? Will there be new curiosities discovered? Etc. The project is accompanied with a “WHAT IS WHITE?” T-shirt. To wear it is like to ask the question. This is another contribution to evaluate the curiosity of people, sent to all collaborators of every metropolis, who will have to document with a photograph, in a public or private place, the presence of this simple visual suggestion in their city. All the photos will then be exposed together in the library of notebooks. Some people, who saw me wearing the t-shirt, already asked me what it is about: "It’s about responding!" Therefore, I collect more ideas on the subject.
[* It was required to write all answers in English language, and where not possible, in the language of the place of origin.]

Notebook

black cover, white letters on black background

9,3 x 14,3 cm. each

[gafo/gabrielli fabrizio design]

Box
white box, white letters on black background
size derives from numbers of notebooks completed
[gafo/gabrielli fabrizio design]

T-Shirt
white cotton, white letters on black background
size S and L
[gafo/gabrielli fabrizio design]

The Circle: parachute and smile. Or how to protect yourself in the Art System

2008-03-01T21:30:00.001+01:00

The new project includes a series of light source performances and photographies. The main theme is the Artist, the surroundings and circumstances of the life of the Artist inside the Art System. March 2008.

The Circle: parachute
digital print on photographic paper
100 x 70 cm.

The Circle: smile
digital print on photographic paper
100 x 70 cm.

Journal 11 - Progetto Arte

2007-12-02T10:00:00.025+01:00

p
p

Journal 11 - Progetto Arte
Fondazione Pistoletto Onlus Editore, Torino
Cittadellarte
2007

Michele Drascek participation in
Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto -
Love Difference's workshop
Da cosa nasce cosa / One thing leads to another
published in Journal 11 - Progetto Arte

Journal 11 documents the projects, events and exhibitions that involved Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto in 2006.
Da cosa nasce cosa / One thing leads to another is a workshop on inter-disciplinary planning - on creative processes for responsible social transformation - held in Gorizia – Nova Gorica in April and May 2006.
Curated by Love Difference - Artistic Movement for an InterMediterranean politic, promoted by Modidi with the support of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region.

more:
eng: http://www.lovedifference.org/eng/network/workshop/gorizia.htm
ita: http://www.lovedifference.org/it/network/workshop/gorizia.htm

314/317/318

2007-12-01T22:00:00.002+01:00

New paintings for the solo exhibition that takes place in Università Popolare degli Studi di Trieste in November 2007.

I am discussing an exhibition with an apparently enigmatic title: 314/317/318. These three numbers representing the title, are written on the same number of inventory plates applied on three pieces of the building property of the Trieste University, to be exact, on three doors, that open into three cosy, minute rooms of small dimensions where the exhibition was held. These rooms were renamed the "bright rooms", and are the venue of the project "Tracce fresche" (Fresh traces) that Michele Drascek had the courtesy to inaugurate. With this spatial metonymy that refuses to announce the content to indicate an anonymous container, to express more with this refusal, the exhibition satisfies its visitors. And with regards to this space (inventory, numbered), and as I said, cosy and minute, Drascek thought out and realized his intervention, which models on the course state of one road; from one room to another, from one door to another. This road passes through open landscapes where a sort of story evolves: the occupation of natural spaces by man and his final disappearance, due to a clear incapability to inhabit these places without destroying them or destroying oneself. The last image is one ironic identification profile that brings to mind the revealing and accusing guilty a natural but deformed creature, some kind of a dwarf with bloodshot eyes. He is accompanied by the legend Physica curiosa, because the tone is not apocalyptic but ironic and aloof, like the one of an entomologist and naturalist used to the freaks of nature [refer to post Physica curiosa]. The most astonishing among these seems to be the man himself. There are three time periods in the story, like there are three rooms that host them; Drascek adapts himself with flexibility in the spaces where he works and it is not a coincidence that his discussion seems to be eminently on the space, which appears to be more natural than architectonic. The first stop is the sky, or better, the tongues of brown, overcast sky, dominated by skies full of initial obscurity or already drowned in the darkness of the night, which is always dark bluish. Greyish diurnal sky, dark bluish nocturnal sky; It is never completely light or dark, nor ever the light falls from the heights to excavate the landscape. The earth’s profile is a silhouette, a strip of hills and apical shapes that appear to be more like turrets and bell towers in the distance rather than lampposts, as they turn out to be at a closer look. Drascek’s ability was to capture the vastness of natural landscapes on rather small size canvasses, 15 x 20 cm.: all is big and distant. The oil technique with the addition of plaster gives opacity to the atmosphere, and the use of a roller to trace lines in the sky, gives a sense of squall and precipitation still dense in the air. Even the elimination of colour, more than the drafting itself, gives a sense of origin and an echo in the distance. The lampposts: a sign of technology which does not appear as invasive as it perhaps should. Not even lattices or other much more monstrous symbols. Or perhaps the glance is already ironic till the charge for an environmental aggression like saying that the man’s work, despite being so pompous, is actually a banal scratch on the nature’s body and the only one to pay for his or hers arrogance is the man alone and not the world. The second stop, summarized in a Posthuman landscape, in fact announces itself as gaseous, mephitic scenery dense with vapours of the day after, but the only living form is a tender roe deer, a delicate form of life, and perhaps because of this, appears to be tougher. Here the irony is apparent. It was said for the idea of the fatal development, which structures the three moments of the exhibition: the spelling is scarcely allusive, recalled by lexical spies in the legends but could have easily been ignored, and Drascek does not do much to impose it. He wants to point it out with a programmatic sheet on the side with a declaration of purposes, but in the end his theme seems to be the indestructibility of the cosmos, its vastness, that does not care about the willingness of the freak of nature’s power, a dwarf of the third station, who is laughed at instead of handed over to our contempt. A poem about the intolerable silence of the horizon that closes in upon us, a glance from the blue heights that make the earth look small.
Marcello Monaldi

Human landscape dyptich 1
Acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
30 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]

Human landscape dyptich 2
Acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
30 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]

Human landscape 3_4
Acrylic and oil on canvas
15 x 20 cm. each

Human landscape. Night view dyptich (detail)
Acrylic, oil and graver on canvas
30 x 30 cm.

Posthuman landscape dyptich (detail)
Acrylic, watercolor and plaster on canvas
50 x 40 cm.
[© private collection]

Physica curiosa

2007-12-01T21:45:00.002+01:00

Physica curiosa
acrylic, oil and watercolor on canvas
15 x 20 cm
25 x 30 cm. with frame

Physica curiosa reminds a piece of the compendiums of pictures and stories regarding monsters, physical abnormalities, and bizarre animals produced during 17th Century.*
Presented with a showy golden frame in its own exhibition room, like in a Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Wonder), the painting is the last work of 314/317/318 exhibition and the first of a series dedicated to the topic:

The last image is one ironic identification profile that brings to mind the revealing and accusing guilty a natural but deformed creature, some kind of a dwarf with bloodshot eyes. He is accompanied by the legend Physica curiosa, because the tone is not apocalyptic but ironic and aloof, like the one of an entomologist and naturalist used to the freaks of nature. The most astonishing among these seems to be the man himself. [refer to post 314/317/318]
Marcello Monaldi

[ * The authors of these studies were respected and experienced physicians and natural philosophers, such as Gaspar Schott, who published Physica Curiosa in 1662]

Hypnos. The personification of the Sleep

2007-12-01T21:00:00.000+01:00

The triptych was produced for The Eagle and the Swan. The Mith of Night in the contemporary art, that took place in Primo Piano Livingallery, Lecce (Italia) in October 2007.

The refined triptych Hypnos. The personification of the Sleep takes us back to the myth: into the oneiric blue, like a shadow, Hypnos, son of Night and Thanatos’s twin brother, gives the refreshing sleep. The atmosphere is in suspense of the transition zone where the conscience becomes an easy prey of the innermost unconscious.

Hypnos. The personification of the Sleep tryptich
acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
15 x 20 cm. each

Against the motorized regime of speed

2007-12-01T20:00:00.006+01:00

Against the motorized regime of speed
installation view
variable dimensions

Site specific light and sound source installation in Galleria Regionale d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Spazzapan for the Omissis 07 Festival of Performing Art, September 2007, Gradisca d'Isonzo, Gorizia (Italia).

Concept and development: Michele Drascek
Technical support and Sound designing: Andrea Chinese
Production: mattatoioscenico
http://www.mattatoioscenico.com/

To surprise!
Amaze at all costs!
Magnificent terror!
Impact-making artists!
Shockvertising art!
You have to be fast in order to see something!
versus
The impact of silence.
The silence of painting.
The silence: one voice.
A language without words:
The language of creation.

Remaining silent, now there's a lesson for you! What more immediate notion of duration?

Against the motorized regime of speed
The silent performance_1

Against the motorized regime of speed
The silent performance_2

Against the motorized regime of speed.
A language without words:
The language of creation.
detail

Against the motorized regime of speed.
A language without words:
The language of creation.
detail

Interval

2007-12-01T19:00:00.001+01:00

Paintings on canvas for the solo exhibition that taked places in Italijanski inštitut za kulturo v Sloveniji, Ljubljana (Slovenia) in September 2007.

The human figure has dissolved, what remains is a shadow, a light and blurry engraved trace. In his paintings, Michele Drascek interprets the constant flow of life and time, liquefaction of materials up to a point, where only the residues are exposed: numb and silent landscapes, aware of their past and present. His landscapes are a reflection of the inner world, where the use of coloured backgrounds and graver become objects and predicates of memories and actions, states of mind that reached a solid and definite balance. There is no contrast or excess, only soft lines, travelling across the canvas, engraved in a layer of plaster, only movements registered with small, bright points. Pastel, oil, acrylic, aquarelle; the author’s choice of techniques appears to be destined for the final representation, the right transfer of a mental image without any conditioning. The author’s work describes a man in his complete absence, reveals the loss of references, of will or better, the need for silence and immobility. It seems as his paintings are trying to achieve the vastness, like the images captured with an electronic microscope or the immense distance of the satellite. Light and dark blue come to life, spilling over the edges of the chosen background, mixing with the surrounding to convey the sense of unity, in order to leave the observer to meditation, a moment of silence and new thoughts. His paintings speak to us about love and distance, passion, strength and calm resignation.
Giulia Pezzoli

Untitled dyptich 1 (detail)
acrylic, plaster and graver on canvas
20 x 20 cm.
© private collection

Lightning dyptich
acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
30 x 20 cm. each

Above
acrylic, plaster and graver on canvas
12,5 x 17,5 cm.

An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing

2007-12-01T18:00:00.001+01:00

Production for 55th Ljubljana Summer Festival (Slovenia) during the X. International Fine Artis Colony Krizanke; exhibited in Ljubljanski Grad in July 2007.

A series of paintings on canvas, a tribute to the sentence of Qohélet, the book of the Ancient Testament present both in the Christian and in the Hebrew Bible, but also the pen name of the author. The paintings became, in a performance, a kind of Libro d'Ore (Book of Hours) during the celebration of the Mass in the churchs...reading between the infinite nothing.

An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing dyptich
acrylic and enamel on canvas
30 x 40 cm. each
[© private collection]

An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing
acrylic and enamel on canvas
40 x 30 cm.
[© private collection]

An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing
acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 cm. each
[© private collection]

An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing
Mass performance

Fade out drawings

2007-12-01T17:00:00.000+01:00

Old master paintings details reversed in a fade out procedure. In the drawings the contradiction cause a new tale, the subject change and is inclined to vanish. Produced in 2007, work in progress.

There's something I can't quite make out...Margarita fades away!

[from Velàzquez Las Meninas]

acrylic, watercolour, enamel and burin on wrapping paper

17 x 10 cm

Genius and Madness - new painting installation

2006-10-01T11:00:00.014+02:00

Primo Piano Livingallery Contemporary Art

present

Genius and Madness

opening

14 October 2006 at 8pm
Primo Piano Livingallery

Palazzo Rubichi

viale Guglielmo Marconi 4

Lecce, Italia

In Genius and Madness new painting installation:

The imperceptible order in the disorder…until the stroke on genius!

acrylic, chalk and burin on plywood and canvas
8 plywoods with frame 27x33cm, 5 canvases 20x20cm, 4 canvases 20x15cm

The imperceptible order in the disorder…

until the stroke on genius!

detail

acrylic, chalk and burin on canvas

20x20cm

The imperceptible order in the disorder…
until the stroke on genius!
detail
acrylic, chalk and burin on canvas
20x15cm

One thing leads to another conclusions in Villa Manin

2006-05-20T11:00:00.015+02:00

Da cosa nasce cosa
One thing leads to another

Saturday, 20th May 2006
Villa Manin, Passariano (Udine)

Conclusions from Love Difference workshop on creative processes for responsible social transformation to be published on Saturday 20th of May 2006 at Villa Manin in Passariano (Udine, Italy).

Conclusions will be published from Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto - Love Difference’s workshop on inter-disciplinary planning, held in Gorizia – Nova Gorica in April and May.

Partecipants in teamwork

Professionals and artists from different fields, including the partecipation of Michele Drascek, work to take aim at the topic of the workshop: the interdisciplinary analysis of the territory of Gorizia – Nova Gorica, understanding the limits linked with the separation, and the intrinsic potential for relationships and confrontation between different people and socio-cultural realities.
The workshop is promoted by Modidi with the support of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region.

more:
eng: http://www.lovedifference.org/eng/network/workshop/gorizia.htm
ita: http://www.lovedifference.org/it/network/workshop/gorizia.htm

Bagliori (Beams)

2006-02-01T22:00:00.000+01:00

Bagliori (Beams), series a paintings on canvas, goes beyond and is produced immediately after Insomnia series, in 2006. All the paintings have the same measure and layers.

Red Beam 2
Acrylic, plaster and enamel on canvas
30 x 30 cm.

Red Beam 3
Acrylic, plaster and enamel on canvas
30 x 30 cm.

Untitled 1
Acrylic, plaster and enamel on canvas
30 x 30 cm.

Untitled 2
Acrylic, plaster and enamel on canvas
30 x 30 cm.

Insomnia

2006-01-01T22:00:00.005+01:00

The concept of Insomnia is a consequence of a period of sleeping disorder characterized by persistent difficulty falling asleep, followed in particular by functional impairment of the eyesight. The field of vision is disturbed by alterations of the colours, stains and light lines. The first step of the production of Insomnia is to take notes of the alterations, make a drawing on paper only just happened. And then paint on canvas a reproduction of the alterations, a part of the field of vision.
Produced in 2006 and exhibited in the namesake solo exhibition Insomnia in Antico Foledôr Boschetti della Torre, Manzano, Udine.

Insomnia 1
Acrylic, plaster and oil on canvas
60 x 60 cm.

Insomnia 3
acrylic, plaster, oil and graver on canvas
60 x 60 cm.
[© private collection]

Goblin
acrylic and oil on canvas
20 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura _1st series

2004-03-01T22:00:00.002+01:00

Series of paintings on plexiglas produced in 2004 for the solo exhibition Caelatura at 47thfloor Creativity Addicted in Roma.

The latin word Caelatura means engraving.
The engraving burin is used on plexiglas plates, a surface that allows both the performance of a particular colour and the use of the engraving technique. In this numerous series (more than fourthy paintings) Drascek chooses plexiglas because of the need for light materials - in the exact sense of the specific weight - and because the boundaries of plexiglas or rather its low resistance to abrasion, is an increase of possibilities for a technical solution: the use of abrasive techniques and burin are a confirmation for this.
The line - an element that marks the works - that as an inscription on burin, assumes a value of measure in composition.

Caelatura #1
arylic and burin on plexiglas
18 x 13 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #2
arylic and burin on plexiglas
18 x 13 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #3
arylic and burin on plexiglas
18 x 13 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #4
aylic and burin on plexiglas
24 x 17 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura _2nd series

2004-03-01T21:00:00.001+01:00

Series of paintings on plexiglas produced in 2004 for the solo exhibition Caelatura at 47thfloor Creativity Addicted in Roma.

The latin word Caelatura means engraving.
The engraving burin is used on plexiglas plates, a surface that allows both the performance of a particular colour and the use of the engraving technique. In this numerous series (more than fourthy paintings) Drascek chooses plexiglas because of the need for light materials - in the exact sense of the specific weight - and because the boundaries of plexiglas or rather its low resistance to abrasion, is an increase of possibilities for a technical solution: the use of abrasive techniques and burin are a confirmation for this. The line - an element that marks the works - that as an inscription on burin, assumes a value of measure in composition.

Caelatura #1
acrylic and burin on plexigls
50 x 50 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #2
acrylic and burin on plexigls
50 x 50 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #3
acrylic and burin on plexigls
50 x 50 cm.

Caelatura #4
acrylic and burin on plexigls
50 x 50 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #5
acrylic and burin on plexigls
50 x 50 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura _3rd series

2004-03-01T20:00:00.001+01:00

Series of paintings on plexiglas produced in 2004 for the solo exhibition Caelatura at 47thfloor Creativity Addicted in Roma.

The latin word Caelatura means engraving.
The engraving burin is used on plexiglas plates, a surface that allows both the performance of a particular colour and the use of the engraving technique. In this numerous series (more than fourthy paintings) Drascek chooses plexiglas because of the need for light materials - in the exact sense of the specific weight - and because the boundaries of plexiglas or rather its low resistance to abrasion, is an increase of possibilities for a technical solution: the use of abrasive techniques and burin are a confirmation for this. The line - an element that marks the works - that as an inscription on burin, assumes a value of measure in composition.

Caelatura #1
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
50 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #2
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
50 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura #3
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
50 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]

Caelatura collage #1
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
17 x 35 cm.

Di fronte (In front of)

2003-06-01T22:00:00.004+02:00

Exhibited in Mostovna Kulturni Center, Nova Gorica (Slovenia) for the opening of GONG Fest 1, supported by Ministry of the Culture of Slovenia.

The entry theme of the exhibition Di fronte (In front of) is an exchange between slovenian and italian artists, the year before the planned entrance of Slovenia like member of European Union (1st May 2004).
The paintings represent a symbol of the italian culture, one of the most popular in literature: Collodi's Pinocchio. Every work is a composition of eight pieces.

Pinocchio #1, #2
acrylic on hive plastic
100 x 200 cm. each
(every composition 8 pieces of 50 x 50 cm)

Quel gaudio luminoso / del silenzio delle cose (That bright bliss / of silence of things) _1st series

2002-11-01T22:00:00.000+01:00

In my opinion, we witness a fundamental change in the framework of Michele Drascek’s production in 2003. In his research, starting from the analysis of the human body, thanks to the reading and the study of Mario Luzi’s poetry, he gets ashore to the interior and informal landscape with the series Quel gaudio luminoso / del silenzio delle cose (The bright bliss / of silence of things). In this new context, the colour – the absolute protagonist – perfectly coexists with a silent line, marked with a burin that crosses the desserts of the soul. These last works of art are characterised by refined chromatic contrasts where the endless and almost neurotic theoretical research by Michele Drascek, seem to achieve tranquillity and peace, symbolised in those gentle and imperceptible lines that stand out miraculously on still skies. These works of art – I believe – are the most intense.
Luca Geroni

Quel gaudio luminoso/del silenzio delle cose
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
18 x 13 cm.
[© private collection]

Quel gaudio luminoso/del silenzio delle cose #2
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
18 x 13 cm.
[© private collection]

Quel gaudio luminoso/del silenzio delle cose #3
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
18 x 13 cm.
[© private collection]

Quel gaudio luminoso / del silenzio delle cose (That bright bliss / of silence of things) _2nd series

2002-11-01T21:00:00.002+01:00

Landscapes narrated by a fluid colour that gently slides on small Plexiglas panels and overlaps in blue, white, pink and black starts, engraved and scratched in some points by thick signs that interrupt the continuity of the brush-stroke yet without distorting its natural course. In Michele Drascek’s new works of art, we register a clear formal and aesthetic change in comparison with his past work, while the conceptual connotation and a well-defined choice of colour always remain strong in his works. The saturated colour and the vigorous feature give way to silent territories that animate through slight, transparent and bright nuances where the human presence is completely forbidden, and is considered unnecessary for these spaces that give the stand to the bright bliss of silence of things, the sudden radiance of the air [Mario Luzi].
Cristina Feresin

Quel gaudio luminoso/del silenzio delle cose #4
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
30 x 24 cm.
[© private collection]

Quel gaudio luminoso/del silenzio delle cose #5
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
30 x 24 cm.
[© private collection]

Quel gaudio luminoso/del silenzio delle cose #6
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
30 x 24 cm.
[© private collection]

Quel gaudio luminoso/del silenzio delle cose #7
acrylic and burin on plexiglas
30 x 24 cm.
[© private collection]

Quel gaudio luminoso / del silenzio delle cose #8

acrylic and burin on plexiglas

70 x 48 cm.

Junichi Shioda on Michele Drascek's workshop

2001-02-14T17:48:00.003+01:00

Junichi Shioda
Michele Drascek's Workshop.
The Kaki Tree

in

Whither The Arts?
Japanese Pavilion, the 48th Venice Biennal
The Japan Foundation, 2001, Tokyo
d
d

Vom Meer bis zum Alpengeist macht der deutsche Gebirgssoldat

2000-01-12T22:56:00.007+01:00

0
0

Vom Meer bis zum Alpengeist macht der deutsche Gebirgssoldat
video documentation - short version
5min
2000

The video is the result of a one-day-visit and documentation of the historical construction called Casermette in the city of Gorizia. Italy.

The sentence Vom Meer bis zum Alpengeist macht der deutsche Gebirgssoldat [The German soldier acts from the sea to the Alps] opens the video and is written on top of a front door of Casermette.

Casermette was an arms dump, built before 1930, composed of six big buildings in the shape of U. After 1947 (treat of Paris) it became a provisional house for exiles from Istria and then house for evicts of the city of Gorizia or for who was not able to afford the payment of a rent. It was a kind of squat for the poorest families of the city. A lot of these families were then moved to new houses built on the other side of the river Isonzo.

Casermette area, due to the presence of dangerous polluters, needs environment reclamation. Today, anyway, the same area is a sort of attempt of industrial zone.

The 1999 urban development plan of the city of Gorizia reports that the area of Casermette:

"It will be connected and absorbed in a valuable environmental sight, enriched by the public usability of the new park areas. Therefore, a part of the settlement of Casermette will become the new centre of the Park, in which will be installed function of support, fun, services. So, this development will create a green not-built area that skirts the river Isonzo and it will set up a further occasion to enhance the territory and the landscape".

The video was shot in 2000, one year after the official publication of the urban development plan.

PS:

the inhabitants of the German villages narrate stories about a legendary beast called Alpengeist, the Ghost of the Alps. So that the sentence could be translated also The German soldier acts from the sea to the Ghost of the Alps. The Ghost – in general means the Unknown – represent what scare the people. In short, the German soldier confront the Unknown, he is brave.

48th Venice Biennale - Michele Drascek's article

1999-02-01T23:00:00.004+01:00

Michele Drascek

Alla Biennale di Venezia. L’albero di Bruno

In the Venice Biennal. Bruno's tree

Il Pepe Verde. Rivista di letture e letterature.

Centro Servizi Culturali del Comune di Anagni (Frosinone),

Arti Grafiche Tofani, Alatri (Frosinone), n.8/2001

In the highest point any lamentation

1999-01-01T22:00:00.007+01:00

An interpretation of The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, painting created by Andrea Mantegna around 1480. Drascek choose this famous painting to create a drawing that - in the face anatomical details - is also a portrait. But here no one is weeping for his death: the absence/silence is the central topic of the drawing, the right quiet silence.

Exhibited in Omaggio a Gorizia. Umetniki Gorici (Homage to Gorizia) in Kulturni Center Lojze Bratuz, Gorizia. Produced in 1999.

In the highest point any lamentation
Pencil, charcoal and acrylic on paper
70 x 100 cm.
[ © private collection]