Bogdan Borčić & Boris Gaberščik: In Dialogue

XVI. 4th Exhibition in the Bogdan Borčić Graphic Cabinet

Even though even the most diverse artistic poetics can prove to be compatible, establishing a dialogue between the practices of two (or more) artists always represents a unique challenge. Within the frame of the sixteenth exhibition in the Graphic Studio of Bogdan Borčić we have decided to confront the works created by the painter and printmaker Bogdan Borčić and the photographer Boris Gaberščik, which, regardless of the obvious differences in the creative process and intentions, communicate on various levels.

Even though they belong to different periods and contexts, their works are similar in their universal expression and curiosity, which surpass the conventional manner of visual representation of images; they play with the perception of the seen and offer a myriad of experience and interpretation possibilities. We have set up a dialogue between Borčić’s prints from his mature period (1969-2003) and Gaberščik’s photographs that were created over the past five years (2017-2021). The similarity between these artworks can also be seen in their technical hand-crafted realisation, direct contact with the material, and in the experimental work processes that revolve around a constant search, testing and changes.

In their creative opuses both artists created seemingly minimal, yet tectonic shifts, while remaining true to their mediums of expression. Alongside painting, Borčić focused predominantly on intaglio printmaking techniques such as aquatint, etching and drypoint, while Gaberščik has been focusing obsessively on black and white studio photography created by a large format analogue camera for the past thirty years.

The exhibition begins with two works that date to 1969, when Borčić briefly flirted with pop art aesthetics and thus responded to the origins of consumer society and its visual manifestations. While his early works abstracted chosen objects or situations, his works from the beginning of the 1980s stopped dealing with the representation of the real, and started slowly merging the contents and form into inseparable categories, in line with the high modernist principles. He gradually radicalised his artistic poetics into a direction that thoroughly excluded mimetic and narrative potentials, and started developing it as an autonomous field of expression through shapes, structures and systems.

The patina and textures were moved to the forefront of the image, thus adopting the inner logic and structure of symbols, which do not show direct meaning. Borčić was interested in forms and the relationships between them, and the rules of construction, which create some sort of an imaginary order regardless of their asymmetry and irregularities. Numerous works he created in the 1980s and 90s addressed the conventions and aesthetics of the visual language, while others reveal the direct attachment to the fragments of life and creativity. For instance, the graphic print Stara oglasna deska (Old Notice Board, 1999) confronts the viewer with a texture of an unknown surface, which functions so homely and seems to have its place in the everyday life.

While the medium of graphic prints enabled Borčić to reduce his form of expression, Gaberščik, due to the nature of his chosen medium, never completely rejected the realistic representation of the world, which would be a practically impossible task in the medium of photography. However, his images are directed and constructed, for they do not show external events or situations, thus they are to be read primarily on the metaphorical level. He skilfully created still lifes, which are usually created from a combination of various everyday objects, in the controlled environment of his photographic studio. Regardless of the ambivalence these images usually allude on the current social reality or relate to the history of art, thus they can lead an attentive viewer to a cerebral game that ends in a variety of possible meanings.

For instance, the work Decisive Continuum (2020) questions the idea of the decisive moment, which is supposedly immanent to the photographic medium, and with this Gaberščik established his practice as decisive continuum. His photographs are created in the isolated medium of a studio and do not carry the basic characteristic of photography– a reflection of time and space. Due to the universality of the possible meanings, they always encourage reflection on the basic and everyday existential, philosophical and political issues, which are thus set into a timeless continuum of life and history.

The works by these two artists thus always reveal structures, systems and textures that reflect traces of life: ulcers, scars, cuts, fatigue, disintegration and passing. In opposition to the idealising and insincerity of the dominating visual culture that focuses on taking out things and situations from their broader contexts, the artists explore the darker sides of existence and creativity, which never obtain a final or finite form. After all, life and art are constantly changing living organisms.

Curator: Miha Colner
Photo: Kaja Selko