Date: 28/01/2011 until 05/02/2011

Location: Gallery KiBela, Maribor – Slovenia

Organisers / Producers:  ACE KIBLA

Iva Tratnik and Marko Jakše have based their work on the 17th century graphic work “L’influence de la Lune sur la teste des femmes”, portraying men holding only lamps and observing the “mad” women that have gathered for the full moon. The women are holding a gathering of a kind, or a battle dance, while the men stay behind cautious, as if wondering what the women are up to. The title is metaphorical in the sense of their duality, duet, duel, a battle dance, within which they almost literally danced alongside their paintings. “Sometimes it’s good to have someone beside you to hold a mirror up to you. In today’s society no one can hold the mirror up any longer, at least not to me. But I really feel that Iva has.”

On display will be large format paintings that were painted by Marko Jakše and Iva Tratnik simultaneously and together. Some giant paintings extend on as much as five metres, making an excellent impression in life-size. The painters “took the plunge and swam” into the naked canvas together. Iva likes planes, open surfaces that breathe, whereas Marko prefers sculpture in painting, therefore he forms, produces an illusion, his own 3D. “Maybe Iva finds this a bit irritating and she makes me know when it gets too much; then an attack on the painting might follow. I am working on a detail, modelling it, making it all round and plastic, and then she simply overpaints it..

Kibla photo archive (Photo: Boštjan Lah)

Date: 14/01/2011 until 25/01/2011

Location: Gallery KiBela, Maribor – Slovenia

Organisers / Producers:  ACE KIBLA

“Intertwining within dream settings of Nataša Ribič, depicted on her painting objects, an ancient bed and pillows, there are expectations, both feasible and unfeasible, real and unreal, sweet and repulsive, all of them integrating the real and the imaginary, the rational and the irrational, promised pleasures and fears… The sights evoking unease or shudder encounter the trivial, the bizarre, the grotesque; mystique socialises with spells, nightmares are being eased by enlightenments or at least hints providing redemption, be it only cocoons of meaning or contents already clearly defined, the symbols being both general and personal, exposing the private and social environment, individual and collective perceptions, the homey closeness and mysterious remoteness…

Nataša Ribič, born in 1963 in Ljubljana, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Ljubljana, the class of Prof Bernik, in 1988. In 1991 she completed her postgraduate studies of painting in the class of Prof Gustav Gnamuš. In years 1991–93 she attended postgraduate studies of graphic art in the class of Branko Suhy. Her works have been presented at more than twenty solo exhibitions and more than thirty group exhibitions, both at home and abroad. They are also part of several domestic and foreign fine art collections, including the collection of the Viennese Albertina. She lives and works in Ljubljana.

Kibla photo archive (Photo: Boštjan Lah)