Borut Popenko / Openings

10€

This time around, Borut Popenko enters UGM Studio and the Loža Gallery with a new series of paintings. In his search for a title for the series and the two exhibitions, the author referred to the atmosphere of the early 2020s, which was characterised by distance, a state of closure, of solitude. In his practice, Popenko addresses the tense relationship between painting-object and painting-image and explores how to fold the canvas, how to open the layers of the canvas into a fan, how to open the canvas like a door. Thus, we search for answers in the fundamental deception of painting – the illusion of space.

With his new series, Popenko opens the door, pushes the windows open, raises the blinds, and invites us to step across the threshold, to let the air in. His paintings are portals that loudly declare: ''Out!''.

Borut Popenko (b. 1969 in Maribor) is an artist with an exhibition career spanning more than 25 years at home and abroad. After completing his studies in art education in Maribor Faculty of Education, where he graduated with a thesis on Colour and Plasticity of Form, he studied abroad, first in Halle, Germany, at the Burg Giebichstein Kunsthochschule Halle (1995/97), where he completed a painting specialisation, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Athens (1998/99) as a scholarship recipient of the Greek Government, and finally at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (2001) as a scholarship recipient of the Czech Government. In 2007 and 2024 he received a working grant from the Ministry of Culture’s Viennese residence.

Catalogue editor: Mojca Štuhec
Texts: Jure Kirbiš, Andreja Podjavoršek (bibliography)
Translation and copy editing: Ksenija Vidic in Jeff Bickert (proofreading)
Photographs: Damjan Švarc
Design and layout: Sara Ozvaldič
Year: 2024
Published by: Maribor Art Gallery
Dimensions: 26 x 18 cm
ISBN: 978-961-6489-40-9
Binding: soft cover
Pages: 62 strani
Price: 10 €