Ana Skobe: (Re)constructing Architecture – Unbuilt Series

The selection of twenty works, created by the young MA of architecture and photographer from Novo mesto, bring a new view of well-known Slovene architectures. The artist started by focusing on architectures created by known Slovene architects such as Jože Plečnik and Edvard Ravnikar as well as contemporary projects designed by architectural offices such as Sadar+Vuga, Bevk-Perović Architects and Dekleva Gregorič Architects.

Selected architectures have, in one way or another, managed to persuade the artist to recognize in them the potential for their rethinking through the medium of photography. She visited the chosen architecture several times, researched it and extracted one or more characteristics that she found telling and characteristic for the studied building. In order to capture even lighting on all parts of the building and achieve a unified atmosphere, she photographed the building at various times.

Ana Skobe does not resort to digital manipulation, as she truly photographs architecture details from unusual angles. Every individual section within the polyptych is thus real. The manipulation, or if I paraphrase it, modification of the architectures takes place only post festum, once the photographs have been developed.

The artist constructs the final image of the polyptychs through a logic that is dictated by architectural thought. She constructs the polyptychs in the form of an architectural grid, by combining small squares or rectangles, which are reminiscent of tiles or bricks, the building elements used in architecture. The artist organises and merges them into a picture, almost as if she was assembling a jigsaw puzzle. She incorporates the characteristics of the architecture into the polyptychs with the use of assembling, the gravitational logic of constructed elements and the offset from the wall with spacers. In this way, she tries to return to the architectural photograph, some of the lost dimensionality.

Curator: Kristina T. Simončič

Photo: Ana Skobe