Dušan Fišer: How Do You Touch the Light?

Opening: Friday, 26 September 2025, at 7pm!

The exhibition entitled How Do You Touch Light? showcases new works by the versatile artist Dušan Fišer, who in his artistic practice mainly focuses on the visual appearance of light and its effect on an individual and society. In a unique ambient setting in the former monastery church of GBJ, he establishes distinctive visual illusionism and explores the optical effects of light. To do that he uses various creative media and methods, from composite installations and light objects to moving images and sound compositions. For this exhibition, he has specially designed and built a series of objects or prototypes that invite the audience to interact and explore their own perception of visual sensations.

Throughout his thirty-five-years long artistic career, Fišer has often addressed the ways in which humans perceive optical effects, while the exploration of the principles of light and illusionist impacts has become even more focused and obsessive in his more recent artistic practice. His version of optical art directly relates to human beings and their relationship to visual signs and sensations. In his complex works, he therefore often experiments with the perception of what is being seen: he questions established norms and ideas, hints at possible meanings beyond conventions and set frameworks, and also addresses other senses, even though vision is clearly dominant in human perception and understanding of the outside world. For the purposes of this exhibition, he has made a total installation that encapsulates the holistic experience of light on the surface and volume of artificial objects and constructed spaces. Light is the matter that defines objects and their forms, as it reflects off them or sifts through them. He has built and installed a series of carefully designed objects whose form, material, and structure may help to establish an effect of visual instability and indeterminacy, as these objects can distract the audience from their usual and expected perception of time and space. These objects appear as a kind of futuristic capsules that can confront people with slightly different sensory perceptions.

The exhibition is a result of a collaboration with Ptuj City Gallery.

Dušan Fišer (1962) is an artist who in his artistic practice often addresses certain cultural and social aspects of everyday life in modern world. In his multifaceted works, in which he merges geometric painting, sculpture, and optical art, he mainly focuses on the questions of the appearance of images and objects in the age of information overload. In 1989, he graduated from the painting department of the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana under the mentorship of professor Metka Krašovec, and in 1991 he completed an MA in painting under professor Emerik Bernard. Furthermore, he also studied at the Minerva Academy in Groningen, Netherlands. He has been regularly and continuously making and exhibiting his works since 1988. In addition to his artistic career, he is also active in the field of education and cultural programme management. He currently works as the programme director of the Ptuj City Gallery. Fišer lives and works in Ptuj, Slovenia.