Goran Petercol
27 Apr - 01 Jun 2013
GORAN PETERCOL · Common Places
Galerija Gregor Podnar is pleased to announce Goran Petercol’s second solo exhibition in Berlin Common Places featuring light installations, drawings from the Symmetries, Halves and Stylization series, and the artist’s most recent series of sculptural works.
The title of the show Common Places addresses the artist’s interrogation of artistic practice as such as well as gallery display. Petercol considers a common place as “something understandable to everyone”, not requiring any level of education or cultural background, appealing rather to the unconscious of the viewer. Petercol transfers the idea of “the understandable” into his artworks, looking back to the three elements of the common place formulated by Aristotle: the connection between more and less (represented in the exhibition by the Halves and Stylizations), the opposition of opposites (Petercol’s long term focus on light-shadow installations) and the category of reciprocity (elements in the Symmetries series). The minimal aesthetics of the entire exhibition enhance the idea of what is understandable in the common place.
Throughout the exhibition the question may emerge: can you create symmetry by simply drawing a line between two completely different objects? In Petercol's work this possibility exists: “The same way a photograph hung on the gallery wall is on display, an electrical switch is also on display by its mere existence in the gallery. From that point of view there is no difference between them – the photograph and the switch are on display and thus can be in a symmetrical relation.”
Born in Croatia in 1949, Goran Petercol entered the art scene in the middle of 1970s. Experimenting with the legacy of conceptual art as well as of analytic painting, Petercol developed a particular mode of working, treating intangible elements such as light and shadows or empty spaces as materials; his spontaneous and controlled work deals above all with the problem of creation itself. Selected exhibitions include: 2009 in Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin (solo), 2004 at 4th Istanbul Biennial, 1995 in Croatian Pavilion at 46th Venice Biennial, 1994 at 22nd Sao Paulo Biennial.
Galerija Gregor Podnar is pleased to announce Goran Petercol’s second solo exhibition in Berlin Common Places featuring light installations, drawings from the Symmetries, Halves and Stylization series, and the artist’s most recent series of sculptural works.
The title of the show Common Places addresses the artist’s interrogation of artistic practice as such as well as gallery display. Petercol considers a common place as “something understandable to everyone”, not requiring any level of education or cultural background, appealing rather to the unconscious of the viewer. Petercol transfers the idea of “the understandable” into his artworks, looking back to the three elements of the common place formulated by Aristotle: the connection between more and less (represented in the exhibition by the Halves and Stylizations), the opposition of opposites (Petercol’s long term focus on light-shadow installations) and the category of reciprocity (elements in the Symmetries series). The minimal aesthetics of the entire exhibition enhance the idea of what is understandable in the common place.
Throughout the exhibition the question may emerge: can you create symmetry by simply drawing a line between two completely different objects? In Petercol's work this possibility exists: “The same way a photograph hung on the gallery wall is on display, an electrical switch is also on display by its mere existence in the gallery. From that point of view there is no difference between them – the photograph and the switch are on display and thus can be in a symmetrical relation.”
Born in Croatia in 1949, Goran Petercol entered the art scene in the middle of 1970s. Experimenting with the legacy of conceptual art as well as of analytic painting, Petercol developed a particular mode of working, treating intangible elements such as light and shadows or empty spaces as materials; his spontaneous and controlled work deals above all with the problem of creation itself. Selected exhibitions include: 2009 in Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin (solo), 2004 at 4th Istanbul Biennial, 1995 in Croatian Pavilion at 46th Venice Biennial, 1994 at 22nd Sao Paulo Biennial.