Anastazija Pirnat / Paintings and Drawings
Anastazija Pirnat / Paintings and Drawings
UGM Šop, Strossmayerjeva ulica 6
13 February–20 April 2025
opening and artist talk: Thursday, 13 February 2025, 18:00
curated by: Živa Kleindienst
Anastazija Pirnat, a painter of the younger generation, who has been confidently appearing on the Slovenian art scene since her first major solo exhibition in 2021, presents a selection of drawings, collages and small-format paintings in the art-for-sale exhibition at UGM Shop. Although Pirnat is known for her large-format works, this time works in smaller formats will be on display. Just as she moves effortlessly between large and small formats and masters both, she also moves boldly between different techniques, processes, colour palettes and artistic spaces.
On the one hand, the exhibition shows intervened analogue photographs in which we see groups of people in various social situations or collective spaces. The artist processes the photos according to the principle of collage. She often paints over them, adds to them and changes details with acrylic colours. Gestures, grimaces, hairstyles, smiles and gazes are distorted, changed, hidden or revealed. She flattens the space, abstracts the figures, gives the atmosphere and events her own interpretation and adds text. Although these works may appear banal and mischievous at first glance, the well thought-through combination of image and text urges us to reflect on everyday social situations and roles, interpersonal relationships, the positions we take and the structures in which we are embedded. These works are always about finding relationships between seriousness, (self-)irony and humour, and they often have a tragicomic effect.
The exploration of the ambivalent boundaries between one state and another and the construction of an image according to the principle of collage are a common thread that also runs through the artist's latest works. These works are created somewhere in between, between fictitious and real, between organic and artificial. The abstract forms that extend and spread across the two-dimensional surface grow into the depths of the pictorial space. It seems as if the paper and the canvas are not supporting them, but that they are actually growing out of them. The artist creates a kind of imaginary landscape, futuristic (techno)objects, organic entities that appear ambivalent in their appearance. Amorphous forms with their softness and warmth create a feeling of homeliness, through which something uncanny constantly penetrates. With a wealth of visual and material layers, Anastasia Pirnat creates images that cast an irresistible spell over us. They demand our attention, and with their fragile balance between visual and material contradictions, they evoke a mixture of unease and pleasure in us and slowly but surely enchant us almost completely.
Anastazija Pirnat (b. 1996, Slovenj Gradec) is a graduate of the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where she is currently completing her master's degree. She received an award from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design for her approach to studies and for the paintings she created in 2019–2020. Her solo exhibitions include Excess of Circumstances (Zala Gallery, Ljubljana, 2023), Word Is Usually not a Replacement (Layer House, Kranj, 2021), Navigating Blunder (Atelier im Schwimmbad, Wies, Austria, 2021), but she is a very nice lady and she is a very nice person and she is a very nice (Dobra vaga, Ljubljana, 2021), I Can't Say Anything Just Like That (Galerija Ravne, Ravne na Koroškem, 2021) and Texture of Erasure (Raum AU, Slovenj Gradec, 2019). In collaboration with Neža Perovšek and Maša Knapič, she created the exhibition Failed Plans for World Domination and Other Predictable Events (Gallery Gallery, Ljubljana 2022), followed by the artist book with the same title. She has also participated in many group exhibitions in Slovenia, including at the Škuc Gallery (Ljubljana, 2022), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška (Slovenj Gradec, 2018 and 2022) the Zala Gallery (Ljubljana, 2021 and 2022), Dobra Vaga (Ljubljana, 2021–2023), the Small Gallery of the Bank of Slovenia (Ljubljana, 2020), the Equrna Gallery (Ljubljana, 2018) and the DLUM Gallery (Maribor, 2019). She has also participated in exhibitions abroad, at the Knifer Gallery as part of the exhibition Off the Hook: Layers and Objects (Osijek, Croatia, 2022), at the Utazu Art Award Biennial (Utazu, Japan, 2022) and at the Academia Moderna as part of the exhibition 4WD; Polycentricity of Painting Issues in the Works of Four Artists: Kosi, Pirnat, Slemc, Zorzut (Zagreb, Croatia, 2020). In 2020, she was awarded the first prize in the art competition Koroška, kdo si? organised by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška. In 2021, she was invited to a residency at the Atelier im Schwimmbad in Wies, where she created and presented the exhibition Navigating Blunder. Her work warm paint cold women is represented in the collection of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška. She is one of the founders of Koroška Pride - Centre for the Development of Equality, where she was the artistic director from 2019 to 2022. As part of the institute, she curated the Primordial exhibition at the Raum Arte Utile gallery in Slovenj Gradec in 2020.
