SLOVENIAN EXHIBITION DEBUTS AT ULRICH MUSEUM OF ART

Monday, 02 October 2006 08:15

WICHITA, KS - Three Slovenian artists, Žiga Kariž, Alen Ožbolt and Primož Ču?nik, have combined their talents and created an exhibition, Love is a Battlefield, that will make its American debut at the Ulrich Museum of Art.  Love is a Battlefield combines the works of the three artists in ways such that the works connect to, correlate with or complement the other works.  Or maybe they don’t. These works are simultaneously in love and in conflict.

Kariž and Ožbolt had been friends for years and discussed their collaboration at length, examining myths about love and hate relationships and artistic rivalry. Kariž saw Pat Benatar’s 1983 anthem as a lighthearted title for the show. Ču?nik, a poet and sound artist, was invited to join the exhibition and create an audio element to a work by Kariž.  The piece, It’s so simple and that’s the way I like it, is a large-scale installation of an iconic New York City room set against a pre-9/11 skyline.  Ču?nik’s sound art acts as a soundtrack to the exhibition during the opening of the show.

Kariž draws his inspiration primarily from modern-art historical movements, design and pop culture, even going so far as to appropriate works by other artists to include in his own pieces that focus on the commodification of culture and art.  In It’s so simple, Kariž has created a simulation of a New York room, complete with cheaply made representations of a Charles Eames lounge chair butted up against an Andy Warhol Brillo box behind a Jean-Luc Godard film.  He drains these “major” works of art of their startling effects by placing them haphazardly together, and removes them from their orderly positions in the historical lineage of art.