We’ll be open till 9pm on 3rd May for this month’s First Thursday. Come and see our spring show of bright young talent - MAD MARCH HARES

Geraldine Gliubislavich 'Interiors' Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm, 2012

Geraldine Gliubislavich 'Do I? Y?' Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm, 2012

Geraldine Gliubislavich 'After All' Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 cm, 2012

Geraldine Gliubislavich 'Love Triangle' Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm, 2012

Hrvoje Majer 'Integrity' Oil on canvas, 167.5 x 152 cm, 2012

Hrvoje Majer 'Oedipus Passion' Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 30.5 cm, 2012

Hrvoje Majer 'Shakesperian Trannies' Oil on canvas, 45 x 31.5 cm, 2012

This is the first in a series of exhibitions wherein the gallery invites two artists to exhibit a selection of new work alongside each other. The purpose is not to seek to unify two distinct and different practices, but rather to open up a dialogue between the artists, and invite the visitor to compare and contrast the work of two contemporary artists, and provoke discussion and debate.

The exhibition looks at two contemporary painters: Geraldine Gliubislavich, a VEGAS-represented artist based in Brussels, and Hrvoje Majer, a Croatian artist living and working in London, and examines their different approaches to painting.

Though its death knell has been sounded many times, painting - a peculiar and primal human instinct - far from being dead, is positively alive and well, and these two painters illustrate how it has been, and continues to be, relevant in a digital age. Though their work has its roots in the realist tradition, Gliubislavich and Majer are not strictly figurative artists; these new works by Gliubislavich are more emphatically abstract than earlier series, and Majer himself started out (to considerable acclaim) as an abstract expressionist. Both artists work primarily from found images, sourced variously from trawling online, flicking through fashion magazines and looting Old Masters. In Gliubislavich’s work, the images are pushed and deconstructed to such an extent that they often disintegrate into pure abstraction, the paint dissolving into dribbles and drips, its transformative powers reduced to reveal its actual materiality. It is this dissolution, from photograph to painting, from painted image to mere gesture, that Gliubislavich is examining. For her, the act or process of painting is the principal concern. In these six new works, she has moved away from her earlier crowd scenes to depict more ambiguous and disembodied spaces. In these psychologically charged images, it is the inner world of the psyche that appears to be investigated. Solitary figures haunt a strange landscape. At pains to keep the subject open, the titles are as mysterious as the images themselves. This seems like a deliberate wrong-footing of the viewer, intended to thwart our efforts to understand, to read, and to categorise.

Whilst Majer’s style is more sharply focused, reading them is no more straightforward. Meanings are not so much hidden as multiplied. As with Gliubislavich, titles are signifiers, but no more. Layers of narrative build upon one another. Notwithstanding the warmer tone of these paintings - the earthy hues contrasting with Gliubislavich’s blue/black monochromes - melancholia permeates the works. Mythology and mysticism inform Majer’s practice, but it is humanity in all its guises, and people’s inner worlds, that intrigues him. Eyes, the traditional windows to the soul, are a consistent and important feature in Majer’s work. Gazing confrontationally out at the viewer, his subjects demand us to address them, whilst simultaneously remaining impenetrable. Yet here in these new works, the subjects have closed their eyes. They have, quite literally, shut us out, and we are left to wonder what those closed eyes signify. Inner peace or darkest despair, it is not clear.

What we see says much about us.

Mad March Hares, Vegas Gallery, 2012

Mad March Hares, Vegas Gallery, 2012

Mad March Hares, Vegas Gallery, 2012

Mad March Hares, Lisa Slominski, Vegas Gallery, 2012

Mad March Hares, E.A.Byrne, Vegas Gallery, 2012

Corinne Felgate

Blue Curry

Pascal Rousson

Lisa Slominski

E.A. Byrne

Henry Hudson

Erik Bendix
E.A. Byrne
Blue Curry
Corinne Felgate
Henry Hudson
Pascal Rousson
Lisa Slominski

Mad March hares, April Fools… there is no denying that spring is a light-hearted time of year. As the snow thaws and the days lengthen, our collective mood lifts with the promise of warmer days and new beginnings. MAD MARCH HARES pays homage to the spirit of the season by gathering together a group of bright young artists for whom playfulness is integral to their practice. This spirited show, comprising screen-printed wallpaper, reworked objects, plotted charts and paintings, sees the morphing of materials and the transformation of the everyday, and begs the question; are things really as they seem?

E.A. Byrne’s formal charts look analytical enough, yet closer inspection reveals their nonsensical nature; evaluating the established linguistics of art criticism, they poke quiet fun at the mores and customs of the art world - as does her absurdist sound intervention which will both baffle and amuse. Pascal Rousson also takes on the art establishment; his irreverent humour is directed mercilessly at superhero-artists. Employing the visual language of the comic book, he deftly reduces highbrow to farce. Erik Bendix also employs cartoon imagery, significantly characters from early animation, manipulated to take the viewer to an altogether darker and more troubling place. The comic quirkiness of his painting Suckerpunch serves only to reinforce its violent undertones.

Blue Curry’s assemblages, with their combination of the banal and the exotic, have a surreal beauty, the work on display here alluding incongruously to tropical paradises – a far cry from the gutter-life depicted in Henry Hudson’s infamous parodies. The latter here shows one of his bronze plaques, a shiny metal cast of impressions on plasticine, the innate childishness of that medium sitting uncomfortably with his distinctly adult themes.

Equally disconcerting is how quickly the familiar becomes unfamiliar in Corinne Felgate’s and Lisa Slominski’s playful adaptations of everyday objects. Both artists here show works with a distinctly domestic theme, though disturbed and disrupted.

Whether the work is intrinsically funny, plain absurd,  or quietly unsettling, the wry and witty outlook of these inquisitive and playful artists provides an enjoyable and thought-provoking journey through the absurdities of contemporary life.

The exhibition is kindly sponsored by The Tanning Shop

Andy Harper

Whitney McVeigh

Hester Finch

Tom Gallant

Emma McNally

Emma Bennett

Emma Bennett
Al Braithwaite
Hugo Dalton
Hester Finch
Tom Gallant
Andy Harper
Whitney McVeigh
Emma McNally
Hugo Wilson

There is something crazy about a culture in which the value of beauty becomes controversial
- Peter Schjeldahl “Notes on Beauty”

There was a time when art was all about beauty. Every painting, every sculpture, every piece of music strove to be beautiful. Beauty was the most perfect kind of knowledge, reconciling the sensual and rational parts of the brain.

The movements and isms of the 20th century changed this. Avant-garde intellectuals challenged the accepted notions of aesthetics, and by the end of the century it was the anti-aesthetics of post-modernism that dominated, with conceptual art ruling the roost. Beauty had been rejected, cast out - considered at best irrelevant and frivolous, at worst decadent, oppressive, and wrong. Indeed, so potent was this reaction that it coined a term: kalliphobia.

So where does that leave beauty now? Has it been reclaimed? Can it be reclaimed? Should it be reclaimed? What is it that makes beautiful art so troublesome, and why does the anti-aesthetic continue to hold the moral high-ground? Is it because a beautiful painting is too quick to convert into a commodity? Or are we so conscious of our troubled world that beauty seems somehow inappropriate, out of touch, quaint?

Kalliphilia showcases works by a selection of contemporary artists who, unusually, and perhaps even unfashionably, embrace beauty and form in their practice. Such an approach can seem surprising in an art world where for so long beauty has been steadfastly avoided. But these artists don’t pursue it blindly, or slavishly, but rather use it as a means to an end. They are unified in their affirmation of the aesthetic, and by their desire to engage their audience through making work that is visually appealing.

Together, they demonstrate how beauty can be more than just skin deep. Emma McNally shows how it can communicate and inform, introducing pictorially thoughts and theories usually explored through the written word and acting as an eloquent entry point to more complex ideas. Her intensely worked drawings embody the philosophical concepts she investigates, and exist as physical manifestations of ways of seeing the world.  Tom Gallant proves that beauty can provoke as well as please in his exquisite pornographic arabesques, which delight and shock in equal measure. Hugo Wilson demonstrates that beauty is not always straightforward: the misleading simplicity of his holy-water-colour works belies their subversive subtext, and Al Braithwaite, in his clever manipulation of existing objects, casts new light on social and political issues and offers up new perspectives on contemporary debates in a smart and succinct way. Beauty can be dynamic, as in Hugo Dalton’s sketches of dancers, which celebrate movement and happily straddle the divide between abstraction and figuration, or it can be quietly contemplative, as in Emma Bennett’s timeless still-lives. Beauty is also capable of disturbing and unsettling, as it does in Hester Finch’s empty landscapes and distorted figures and Andy Harper’s thorny undergrowths of twisted nature. Perhaps most importantly, beauty can tap into the very essence of what it means to be human through a primal language that is illustrated perfectly in Whitney McVeigh’s abstractions.

Beauty is not vapid. Beauty is powerful, engaging and democratic. It makes us receptive. In contrast to the anti-aesthetic, which reinforces art’s elitism, beauty opens doors. And that is what this show seeks to celebrate.

VEGAS is delighted to welcome Jessica Carlisle to the gallery as acting Creative Director. Jessica will continue to grow the gallery as Suzanne Schurgers has done so successfully over the past five years and begins her appointment with the group exhibition Kalliphilia.

The exhibition is kindly supported by British Council and Maribor Art Gallery.

Vzigalica Gallery
Trg francoske revolucije 7, Ljubljana
10am-6pm Tue-Sun, closed Mon
contact: Marija Skocir, +386 (0) 1 241 2539, marija.skocir@mm-lj.si

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