ŽIGA KARIŽ (1973)

Žiga Kariž is an artist working in the fields of painting, drawing, illustration, installation etc. His work has been exhibited in most European countries, as well as in the USA, Brazil and Japan. In 2003, he represented Slovenia at the Venice Biennale, and he has also participated in the biennales in Rome, São Paulo, Pančevo and Prague. Since 2010, he has been a professor at the Department of Painting at the University of Ljubljana’s Academy of Fine Arts and Design.

Kariž often – especially in his early series – confronts the viewers with the meaning and the role of a painting, e.g. whether they understand it as a work of art with a deeper message or merely as a decorative element placed within a space, be it a gallery or a living room. The White City series is one of his earlier ones. His fascination with New York, which is even more evident in his later works, is already noticeable here. The geometric figures resemble the grid-like layout of New York’s streets, instead of the expected grey, however, the artist uses shades of orange, yellow and green, typical of the 1970s décor he saw in his home environment as a child. He pairs foreign, grey elements with the familiar, warm ones. His work often deals with the nostalgia for the 1970s, the period of his early childhood. The exhibition features one of the four paintings from the White City series together with a selection of related studies (drawings, sketches). The other three paintings are on view as part of the museum’s permanent collection of contemporary art.

Lost Paradise is a book Žiga Kariž created together with the designer Vasja Cenčič. Kariž has included found media images dating back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, which he first encountered during his childhood. As part of this particular installation, the individual pages from the book are scattered randomly on top of the table. The installation entices the viewers to move the pages, thus impacting the sequence of images, the viewing rhythm and the artwork installation itself.