Sodobna umetnost (Aljoša Abrahamsberg),
12. marec 2022
― Transparentnost, krhkost. Iztok Maroh, ki kot umetnik, kurator in predavatelj deluje predvsem na področju umetniške skulpturalne keramike, v svojih kontinuiranih redefinicijah »umetniških dogodkov« raziskuje odnos med vizualnim, pojavnim svetom in človekom ter načine, na katere en drugega dekonstruirata, vzpostavljata, definirata, preoblikujeta. Kateri so tisti dejavniki, ki te procese pogojujejo? Kaj definira človeka skozi opazovanje umetniškega dela in obratno? Transparency, fragility. Iztok Maroh, who works as an artist, curator, and lecturer mainly in the field of artistic sculptural ceramics, in his continuous redefinitions of »artistic events«, explores the relationship between the visual, phenomenal world and human and how they deconstruct, establish, define and transform each other. What are the factors that condition these processes? What defines a person through observing an artwork and vice versa?The story Maroh is staging this time is multilayered, as is typical of his works. Naturally, the artist’s tireless contemplation about the aesthetic experience of the modern man cannot bypass the current state of mind that humanity is facing. The story the artist tells through the gallery space is about discomfort, individual and collective anxiety, the construction of value and the evaluation of labor within the capitalist structure, the alienation of the individual, the absurdity of the material, the absence of meaning and, consequently, one’s search for »footholds« and familiar associations within the phenomenal world, which he is trying to make sense of. Like any good story, this one, too, engages the viewer repeatedly with each individual artwork – the artist uses a fragile material such as porcelain and the menacing depth of the Black 3.0 black pigment as well as individual motifs of artworks to create formal and conceptual antagonisms.
