4. 8. 2023–30. 9. 2023 Milan Golob / exhibition opening

Milan Golob / exhibition opening
Paintings (of a female friend) and titles of paintings yet to be created
UGM Studio, Trg Leona Štuklja 2
Friday, 4 August 2023, 19:00

curator: Andreja Borin

You are kindly invited to the opening of Milan Golob's solo exhibition Paintings (of a female friend) and titles of paintings yet to be created in the UGM Studio, which presents the artist's work from the last two decades.

Golob painted four circles at random for the first time about twenty years ago. They have been a constant in his work since then. In his small-size paintings, colour, background, painted circles, geometric grid, and other elements interact differently. Every detail is crucial. When the painting is finished, the artist assigns it a title that is just as important as the painting itself. He initially searched for the titles of the paintings among renowned personalities in the fields of art, literature, history, science, etc., but now the majority of them he discovers when travelling, particularly when visiting graves. The title of a painting could be, for example: Joan Beaufort (1407–1445), Zmago Jeraj (1937–2015), Sylvia Plath (1932–1963), Ljubica Rafajlovič (1932–1958), Boro Đukić (1951–2013), Hafsa Mouini (2014–2014), etc. A painting labelled after a Scottish queen, a Slovenian painter, an American poet, a male stranger, a female stranger, and a child — to take the above random selection as an example — can be found side by side at the exhibition in the same room and the same row. A sort of creative take on the danse macabre. In this dance, which recognises no boundaries of gender, age, place, or time, each participant joins with only a few coordinates: the first name, the last name, the year of birth, and the year of death. Four points, four circles on the canvas of a lifetime.

Milan Golob (b. 1963) earned his bachelor's degree in physics from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology (FNT, now FMF) in Ljubljana in 1987. He then graduated from the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (now ALUO) in Ljubljana in 1993. He was the editor of the fine arts magazine Likovne besede / Art Words from January 1996 to December 2000. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions both at home and abroad and has won numerous awards and prizes, including the Prešeren Student Award for Painting (1992), the Henkel Art Award — Nominee (2005), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Scholarship (2003), and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia Working Scholarship (2007). He lives in Radenci and works in nearby Kupšinci.