Simon Mlakar: This is Our Universe

Ivan Grohar Gallery
21 July–12 September 2021

Exhibition curator: Boštjan Soklič

The latest spatial installation, conceptually designed for the existing gallery venue at the Ivan Grohar Gallery, is the work of Simon Mlakar, a versatile artist and member of the Škofja Loka Artists' Association. The exhibition shows the artist's visualisation of in-depth reflections on the origin of the universe the way we know it, and an individual interpretation of the rise (and possible decline) of our galaxy, and along with it of our civilisation, whose existence within the infinite cosmos is most likely negligible… or it might be not. This is something we do not know. The installation is staged in a minimalist way, with contrasted light and colours.

In the first gallery room, Mlakar deals with the civilizational context of homo sapiens with a human comedy taking place inside of it. He presents a familiar motif on top of self-adhesive foil covering one of the gallery’s longer walls. The monumental image in a decorative form is a continuation of the artist's exploration of a theme that he finds to be ever-exciting and is related to symbols appropriated by various ideologies in the past. However, unlike in the rose installation staged in the Slovenian Association of Fine Art Societies’ atrium in 2005, in this particular case Mlakar develops his concept through the image of our (micro)cosmos, woven from the recognisable features of two world religions and a totalitarian system (communism), thematizing the mechanisms and perversions of state and religious institutions that use ancient symbols to achieve their political agenda. In his characteristic, slightly humorous and light-hearted way, Mlakar explains the similarities between (seemingly) different religious languages and symbols, taken from Christian as well as other – more exotic – contexts adapted to the needs of existing systems.

The second part of Mlakar's exhibition titled This Is Our Universe is an attempt at presenting our universe in space and time by means of a logical-scientific consequence in a refined artistic and conceptual way that places the viewer in a different relation to things. The second exhibition room is immersed in black, pierced by a luminous point that can be interpreted in multiple ways: as the centre of our galaxy, as concentrated light – the remnant of the first stage in the formation of the universe. It can be viewed as the starting point of all galaxies that have been moving away from it since the creation of the universe. Perhaps it is a zero that also represents infinity, or it might be the “light” that marks the dynamics of the coming of things into existence both in the Old Testament and in other holy books of ancient cultures and civilisations.