Month: April 2011

Going back again to an exhibition of Janez Suhadolc in 2006. The reason is my recent interest in Pinterest. There two photos of Robert Wilson’s Parzival Chair, Chair with a Shadow came up and I had immediately associations with that exhibition by Suhadolc.

The purpose of the setting is not to simply place Suhadolc’s chairs into a room and leave the Permanent collection authors’ paintings on the walls. The exhibition was set up by Suhadolc himself to reflect a special relationship between his own works and the works of other authors. He uses the so-called quotations by other authors. He places his works and drawings within a certain distance to the works of other authors in such a way that the visitor is forced to look at them differently than he is used to. (Namely, many a time the visitor embraces the whole image only superficially, with almost no interest in the details, the painting becomes more of an “equipment” which truncates whole experience.) This time it is different. The viewer is forced to look for details and structures, both of the paintings as well as Suhadolc’s exhibits. For us at the gallery, this kind of setting is thus even more unusual and very special since we are more or less used to setting up exhibits “as they are”. Namely, we prefer for each author and his work to be on a separate wall, and to have as little dialogue with other works as possible, except when the concept of an exhibition involves a connection of different authors.

So Suhadolc placed his chairs in a certain position vis a vis certain chair paintings. The way he did that according to the two photos here above give similar thoughts as the The Wilson Parzival Chair with a shadow. Wouldn’t you agree?

The Latter photo is from an auction (The Robert Wilson Loft Sale) at Philips de Pury in 2007 where it fetched $26,400

For me the Parzival is a chair installation in itself. But it took a detour to Slovenia to appreciate it.

BTW now Janez seems to have a blog with….one post