Tejka Pezdirc: Temporary Condition

In the exhibition Temporary Condition in the lapidarium of Galerija Božidar Jakac, sculptor Tejka Pezdirc presents an installation of a fragmented body, where we encounter its driving system. Even though the artist uses materials such as epoxy, silicone, textiles, plaster, she primarily works is marble. The exhibition features stone organs, comfortably housed within skeletal stretchers and surrounded by textile nerves and tissue. As in the human organism, these systems are closely intertwined and in a vital interdependent relationship.

The body that the artist has created for the lapidarium has four separate entries, and is even further subdivided into smaller compartments. Through interventions and the placement of objects in the space, she has woven relationships between the elements that communicate through walls and work towards a merger so that the body can function as one. Tejka Pezdirc’s sculptural practice is based on relationality. She creates it through an installation that seeks confrontations with colour, materials and light, and above all with the viewer’s gaze. Her works are full of contradictions. Hard marble folds in soft fleshy coils. It is covered by a rubbery blanket of skin that thins at the edges and becomes increasingly translucent, deceptively delicate, even if the material would not allow any trace of it to show through. The apparently solid constructions are held together by a few nails, covered by a paper-like fabric that looks like milky glass under subdued light. The concealment of the real condition is crucial, as it tempts the viewer to spend more time with the works and relate them to what has already been seen.

Tejka Pezdirc (1985) is a sculptor who deeply cares about the construction of space and the role of the viewer in the installation. In 2011, she graduated in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and studied at the Facultad de bellas artes de Altea in Spain, where she enrolled in the Spatial Installation programme and dedicated herself to researching sculptural space and conceptual art. Her artistic practice is largely focused on relationality, or the relationship between objects, space and the public. She lives and works between Bela Krajina and Ljubljana.

Curator: Deja Bečaj

Photo: Jaka Babnik