A Manual by Tomaž Furlan

Retrospective Exhibition 2005–2025

Loft Gallery, 18. 6. 2025 – 17. 5. 2026

Curators: Anabel Černohorski, Saša Nabergoj

A Manual by Tomaž Furlan, on view at three locations within the Škofja Loka Castle, covers the last twenty years of the artist’s work. The Loft Gallery features a selection of his works created between 2005 and 2025. Exhibited on the ground floor of Škofja Loka Museum is Furlan’s work Book (2010), which is part of the museum’s permanent art history collection. Nearby, in the video area of the Museum’s Living Room, visitors can watch a compilation of Furlan’s video performances titled Wear I–XVII (2005–2014).

A Manual by Tomaž Furlan, on display in the Loft Gallery, includes selected works from all three of the artist’s open-ended art series. The recurrent feature of Furlan’s Wear series (2005–) are interactive objects that the viewers are supposed to engage with through active participation. Thus, the series raises questions about the relationship between the artist, the artwork, the viewer and the institution. The Morning series (2019–) features various more or less everyday objects – even completely useless ones – offering reflection on usability and aesthetics in art. For the most part, the Walk series (2021–) is focused on the floor and its title hints at the fact that the works can be walked on. The exhibition, tailored specifically for this particular gallery space, includes works that had long existed only as ideas in the artist’s sketchbook. Some of them were being created on-site right up until the opening of this exhibition.

Tomaž Furlan is a sculptor and intermedia artist whose first artistic explorations date back to the early years of the new millennium – a time when technology was becoming more widely available. Getting his very first computer and digital camera significantly shaped Furlan’s early artistic expression. In addition to his interest in technology, film and home-made mechanisms, one of the focuses of his artistic practice was (his own) body. Other features that are characteristic of his entire oeuvre are a distinctive sense of humour and an interest in the way individuals are embedded in contemporary economic and social conditions.

All of the above comes together in Furlan’s distinctive Wear series, which he started working on circa 2005, while still in the midst of his sculpture studies. This series brings together robust, often wearable and, most of all, interactive objects made from recycled materials and found objects. Up until 2014, the series was largely characterised by video (performance) art – first as a stand-alone medium and later as some kind of bizarre video manual for the use of DIY devices (Wear V–VI–VII, 2005–2008). Since 2014, the series has made no use of digital technology (Wear XX, XXI, XXII, 2015), this, however, does not mean that the artist has given up the video format – it’s just no longer at the forefront of his artistic practice.

Circa 2019, Furlan’s work took an aesthetic turn, most evident in two of his series: Morning (Border Not Working, 2019), started that year, and Walk (I Made This So You Can Walk Over Me and Know It, 2021), which he has been working on since 2021. Although both series still incorporate waste materials or scraps and discarded objects (Useless Objects I–III, 2025), which have been a constant feature of his work since the beginning of his artistic career, stone and concrete are taking on an increasingly important role, suggesting a greater aesthetic potential (Scrapes, 2021).

The division of Furlan’s works into series is only one of the possible exhibition entry points. As his works are constantly built on and adapted to various exhibition venues and contexts, it is sometimes difficult to know exactly which series individual works belong to, because their characteristics are often intertwined. The categorisation stems from the artist’s inner need for order and classification, which in part is socially conditioned. Furlan, however, often approaches rules in a playful way – not only those that apply in art, but he also questions broader social constructs such as identity, borders and migrations (More Local Than Me, 2021; Border Not Working). Through his works and their titles, he often encourages viewers to reflect on social issues, also in relation to the past (All the Things My Grandfather Did I Am Not Allowed To, 2025) and even the future (Manual for a Home-made Spacecraft III, 2019–2025).

Sometimes it takes years for the ideas in Furlan’s sketchbook to be turned into art (Tunnel, 2025), at other times an everyday object suddenly becomes the foundation for a new work (Family Table, 2021), and sometimes a piece of art is a combination of both (Useless Objects). Furlan is no stranger to building on existing projects, transforming and adapting them to different exhibition spaces and contexts – this is certainly true of the project Manual for a Home-made Spacecraft III, which is the third edition of the same work and serves as a reference for the title of this exhibition.

The title reveals the essence of Furlan’s creative practice, which is based on the principle of DIY. Although his approach to art is unmistakably conceptual, most of his works are created by means of an intense, practical and handwork process, centred on the search for innovative solutions to the technical, building and construction challenges that the artist takes up himself. In doing so, he applies a wide range of skills acquired in his youth in his family’s stonecutter’s workshop, while doing various odd jobs and later as a restorer and sculptor.

Commentary on contemporary social and economic conditions – often delivered with humour, irony and self-irony – remains an important aspect of Furlan’s work. The retrospective spanning twenty years of the artistic activity of one of Slovenia’s most prominent conceptual artists is not chronological; it is shaped like a circular path, on which visitors get to walk aided by a guide with descriptions of the works revealing the various thematic segments of Furlan’s oeuvre.

As visitors to the exhibition, we transcend the usual relationship between the viewers and a work of art – we become a vital and integral part of it. Without our participation, many works do not fully come to life. This makes the need for an in-person gallery visit and a direct experience of art – one that goes beyond viewing art passively from a distance (on screens) – all the more evident. The opening piece titled I Made This So You Can Walk Over Me and Know It, used by the artist to directly address us as soon as we enter the gallery space, thus serves as an invitation to interact with the work and also as a call for our personal presence at the exhibition.

Tomaž Furlan

Tomaž Furlan (1978) graduated in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. His work has been showcased in numerous exhibitions both in Slovenia and other countries, including at the Manifesta 9 biennial (Genk, Belgium, 2012), U3 | 7th Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia (MSUM, Ljubljana, 2013), the group exhibition The Present and Presence (MSUM, Ljubljana, 2014), the Port Izmir 3 triennial (Izmir, Turkey, 2014), the exhibition Technical Unconscious (Porto, Portugal, 2014), the solo exhibition Tomaž Furlan: Wear Series (2005–2015) (Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Rochechouart, France, 2015), and the retrospective solo exhibition Tomaž Furlan: The Mother of All Struggles (City Art Gallery Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 2024–2025). He received the OHO Group Award (2012) and the Rihard Jakopič Award (2017). His works are included in the collections kept by MSUM, Galerija Božidar Jakac, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, MUMOC (Madrid), Škofja Loka Museum and the Generali Collection. He works in Ljubljana and Škofja Loka.