LMAKprojects
Miha Štrukelj: Memories of a City
February 4 – March 11, 2012
Opening: Saturday, February 4 from 6-9 pm
LMAKprojects | 139 Eldridge Street (Between Broome and Delancey) | NY, NY 10002
New York - LMAKprojects is pleased to present Slovene artist Miha Štrukelj’s Memories of a City, a first solo exhibit with the gallery. For this exhibit Štrukelj will create an installation of murals and small drawings on panels throughout the gallery to address the limitations and confines of the gallery space. In his work Štrukelj’s methodology is a reduction of everything back to a grid, contour and line. His eye reacting to architectural settings combined with angular patterns that are contradicting and complex. Bringing formal order into the newly created chaos and disparate elements the grid evokes both the sense of painting and drawing tradition as well as Cartesian coordinates and maps.
Štrukelj’s scenes are usually urban spaces defined by architecture, landmarks and points, which create a tension and shape our view. In between there are empty and forgotten spaces that he captures. These anonymous moments are combined to emphasize and construct a new reality of disparate contemporaneity, a visual study of digital existential dilemma of the human experiences. The panels, found within the installation, are either layers of mylar stripping away the trails of the subjects surrounding or wood panels jutting the subjects into the viewers space. They are components of the installation but embody their own sense of space. Through these elements, Štrukelj is able to play with depth and layering while also enhancing his point of focus be it a line, structure or individual. The acts of the subjects are not heroic yet through isolation the viewer is absorbed into their act in life. Štrukelj is an observer, yet his drawn observations force the viewer the illustrated realm and become part of these isolated instances in time. He exposes the grey area that we dismiss in our everyday life.
Miha Štrukelj was born in 1973 in Ljubljana, Slovenia where he still lives and works. He has an MFA from Academy of Fine Arts and one such awards as the Henkel drawing award, the Pollock-Krasner Grant to name a few. His work has been shown at the 53rd Venice Biennial at the Slovenian Pavilion and can be found in the public collections such as the Uni Credit Bank, Siemens Collection, Adrian Riklin Foundation in Vienna, Societe Generale in Paris, ECB - European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, NLB - Nova Ljubljanska Banka, and Government of the Republic of Slovenia.
