MATIJA BRUMEN: PHOTOS Opening of the exhibition
Matija Brumen (1975, Maribor) graduated in Japanese studies and philosophy at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, and then enrolled in a master’s degree in visual communications – majoring in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana.
He presented himself independently at an exhibition at the Photon Gallery in Ljubljana. Everyday spaces – unusual views, 2012.
He has participated in several group exhibitions:
2014/15 A look at Slovenian fine arts at home and abroad Completely fresh, Kostanjevica na Krki, Celje, Nova Gorica
2012 After the Fall, Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee, USA
2012 Premiere, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje
2010/2011 After the Fall, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Arts, NY, USA
2010 U3 – 6th Triennial of Contemporary Slovenian Art, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana
2010 Exhibition of nominees for the OHO Group Award, City Gallery, Ljubljana
2009 Essl Award Exhibition, Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, (Vienna), Austria.
AT THE EXHIBITION OF MATIJA BRUMEN: PHOTOS
“Matija Brumen’s contemporary photography is marked by the poetics of presenting objects and milieus of everyday reality. In the sign of the so-called “straight” photography, which depicts scenes realistically and objectively, as the medium allows, it creates clear, frontal and focused images without the use of manipulation. These images offer neutral and at the same time direct access to their objects. The strong presence of the photographed draws the viewer into selected spaces of the author, who wants to present to us in works what we usually overlook. ”(Kukovič, Katarina. FRANC MESARIČ AND MATIJA BRUMEN – Public spaces – intimate views. [Printed]. 2014. Žalec: Institute for culture and tourism Žalec)
“In the design of Nova Fotografija 4 organized by the Novi Sad Photo Gallery in 1984, the simultaneous appearance of young photographers from Maribor and Ljubljana felt the” fatherhood “of Dvoršak’s photography, which touched in a sense a subculture – this social phenomenon to which they were fully committed. generations of photographers, active in the eighth and following decades. ” (Bassin, Aleksander. A DECISIVE CUT (IN MEMORY OF IVAN DVORŠAK AND ZMAGO JERAJ). Catalog of the posthumous retrospective of Ivan Dvoršak’s opus. 2015. Maribor: Maribor Art Gallery)
The introductory quotations indirectly announce the new Ljubljana presentation of Matija Brumen with two series – Izza (2002) and Sijaj (2007 and 2014). The combination of the first black-and-white and second color series in the same exhibition in the Janez Boljka Gallery – Imago Sloveniae means in the author’s oeuvre (which is surprisingly large and high-quality in its intensity) a unique reflection on exterior, urban spaces. One time, the photographer presents himself in the position of an almost voyeuristic observer of a human anthill on a construction site, and another time as a documentary filmmaker of a selected residential neighborhood during holiday decorating.
The fact is that the photograph of Matija Brumen can be placed in a selected series of “heirs” of the late Maribor colleague (and the pioneer of Maribor black photography in the 1970s) Ivan Dvoršak. Maybe even on the formal side – that’s after the black frame in Brumen’s photo. Otherwise, he justifies the status of Dvoršak’s heir as an excellent modern interpreter of urban spatial phenomena – from a metropolis in its monumentality with the light of neon civilization to its quiet, alternative subculture.
It is about the light capture in Brumen’s photograph that the following findings are worth writing down. The intense whiteness radiated by the roundness in the black-and-white photograph, which was created when the lens was pressed against the slit in the physical block around the construction site, represents a new content-expressive element in such Brumen’s shots. On the other hand, the brilliant reflection of a richly decorated neighborhood contrasts interestingly with the frozen moment and acts almost as a metaphysical component that can place this type of Brumen’s series among the light guerrilla tendencies of this new phenomenological phenomenon in contemporary visual art.
And what else can we add: both of Brumen’s photographic series represent, in addition to all these convincing visual qualities in an expressive sense, a conscious authorial narrative of his urban domicile, which of course reliably surpasses the diary visual record, which, according to Brumen’s further, partially realized recording , expands into a widely designed photobook with an accentuated creative line.
Aleksander Bassin,
curator
