Meet the artist / Boris Beja
Meet the artist / Boris Beja
Who are you and what do you do?
My parents gave me the name Boris and my grandfather's last name was Beja. I have studied at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering and at the Academy of Fine Arts, Uni – versity of Ljubljana. Ever since my studies, I have been translating impulses and information into frozen forms, into refreshed forms and narratives. These "drains" usually show results in the form of installations or other medium, which at that moment seems most effective in collaboration with the content and is also economically viable. It boasts and exists in exhibitions and galleries. These translations are also present when I am working with listeners of the Public Institution Pionirski dom, in which I translate my own experiences for older lovers of visual art.
Describe your work in three words / adjectives.
Frozen pople, frozen nature, frozen music
Best advice on the art world you've received?
Every day you do something for sculpture. And if you only read the text about art. It is necessary to move forward.
Artwork / author / music / movie that has been your favorite lately?
Elbphilharmonie of the Herzog bureau and de Meuron in Hamburg, which I visited in February. And I am "inspired" by Partizan, a monument to the hostages of Ivan Štrekelj, who greets me every night in Tivoli on the way to Rožnik.
What do you fear when you create?
Fear eats the soul! And in recent years I have been trying to avoid it. There may be a double, the first existential in the form of paying bills and the second, how much time and where the opportunities for translations and realizations of one's own artwork will be. More than fear, there is a curiosity and a reality check of the form that I had previously thought and thought in my head.
What creation tool would I not be able to live without?
In recent years without a balcony on Vrtače where I think of my artistic practice. And without a father who, with his experience and hands, has helped me build artistic constructions in recent years.
What do you consider to be the biggest success of your artistic career so far?
Any project realized may seem like a success.
How do you view the positive or negative critique of your creation?
Is there criticism at all? Mostly it is shoulder shaking that can raise doubts, but in them I try to find support points to further my own practice. For the most part, comments hang in the air and may be forgotten in the production of a new one.
Name an artist that you would like to be compared to.
It would be hard to name just one author. In fact, I do not have a "guru" to follow him faithfully and rely on him in production.
What do you do in self-isolation?
I am limited by material in self-isolation, so I undertook two tasks. First, with a repetitive cut of the fresh pain inscription, I work for an exhibition in Belgium. Repetition is a constant in my practice and has now come to fruition in a few dozen meters of typographic perforated pattern. The second part was dedicated to the work for an exhibition at your institution, where I translated my own ballet experience into a new format, which will be presented in the form of a spatial video installation in Studio UGM. At first, ballet was a recreation, something that seems an unusual obligation in the adult years. Later on, in the Pirueta Ballet School program in the class Ballet for Ladies, I started to think of ballet completely new, I learned about my own anatomy, classical steps and forms of ballet, body posture, etc. Part of this is a video format in which she and her teacher repeat ballet lessons. At the same time, this realistic experience offered me a whole new reading of this stage format in the theater, which is a great upgrade of recreation.
Boris Beja (1986) first graduated in 2009 from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering from Graphic Communications, University of Ljubljana and then graduated again in 2013 from Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Uni – versity of Ljubljana. He has had a number of individual exhibitions and has collaborated on several group ones. He has received some awards, among them the 2012 Prešeren Student Award for sculpture and, in the same year, the highest award for a contribution to the sustainable development of our society, the Slovene Human Resources Devel – opment and Scholarship Fund. Beja is also a critic and a curator. In his work, he unites various visual practices into an aestheticised, direct address with an emphasis on social criticism. From 2010 to 2013, he was writing articles on the subject of culture for the web portal Planet Siol.si. He was nominated for the OHO Group Award in 2015 and 2016. He has presented himself in many solo and group exhibitions. From the begining of 2014 until autumn 2017 he worked at Škuc Gallery as assistant of artistic director of Škuc Gallery. He lieves and work in Ljubljana.
