From space to space, from dwelling to dwelling, from studio to studio

The artistic process of Janja Kosi involves inhabiting and domesticating spaces. Urban landscapes, industrial buildings, the home or the idea of home – her works are always about the question of when a space becomes familiar, when is it truly known and taken as one’s own. The artist’s process is clear here, it is based on drawing, the analysis of space, its projection and metamorphosis. The result is always surprising. On the one hand, because she treats the space thoroughly and the transformation that the chosen space undergoes in her work focuses on details or voids that are often overlooked; on the other hand, because the process always involves an awareness of the historical and social circumstances of the space on which she focuses.

This time the boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar are blurred in the example of Švicarija, to which Janja Kosi directs her attention as a temporary resident. Her work is steered by a reflection on past residents and hotel guests, as well as a foreshadowing of all those yet to come. In the fluidity of its contents, the house in the park comes quite close to a pavilion – an architectural form of a light and temporary structure that basically resembles a tent – a shelter. We come even closer to the pavilion through the prism of Švicarija’s designation as a space for making and viewing art. In analogy to the pavilion as a shelter, we thus move on to the pavilion as an exhibition space, which is seen differently each time because of its changing content. Another space characterised by the prepositions from … to ….

The appropriation of the spaces we inhabit or visit is something the artist has long been concerned with. In her pictorial language, she drafts out spaces based on photographs and architectural plans, projects them with light, devotes herself to their voids in this way and then often reassembles them. She creates a new drawing or a new object that is several steps away from its starting point in physical space. The difference between the two is comparable to the difference between the way we perceive a space when we first enter it and the way we perceive it when we return to it after we have got to know it well and it becomes familiar to us.

Remembering and thinking about how she imagines her former dwellings today, Janja Kosi finds that it is the patterns of light on the surfaces of the flats that are most strongly imprinted in her memory. Light in particular is of great importance in her work, as it is not only an essential part of her artistic process but also the element that for her has the greatest power to domesticate a space or create an ambience. In the present exhibition, it therefore plays a central role in directing the viewer’s gaze to the newly created objects.

These take the form of pavilions, or rather follies, scaled-down garden pavilions, typical of 18th-century English gardens. Buildings that, freed from their function, merely embellish their surroundings, are elements of surprise and are not subject to any architectural style, while their interior remains inaccessible to people.1 Even though we can easily recognise the architectural details of Švicarija in the ornaments that adorn this type of pavilion by Janja Kosi, its structure may remind us more of other buildings or may be incomparable to anything we know. Each pavilion is a derivative image of another space, and each space can be seen by each of us in our own way, emphasising other features and completely overlooking something else.

They are inseparable from light, but not all in the same way. Some of them the artist has illuminated in such a way that their shadows stretch across the space, flattening them again and bringing them closer to the source material in the form of plans and photographs. Others are lit from within and thus become luminous bodies. The spaces of domesticity have become domesticity-creating objects that help people become more accustomed to living in temporary dwellings – in each case, pavilions as shelters.

One thing remains certain. Contemplation, analysis and synthesis, as Janja Kosi undertakes them, start from a position of uncertainty. From the transition from space to space, from dwelling to dwelling, from studio to studio. The possibility of living in Švicerija, a place that has offered shelter to many people in the past, makes this process and its results possible, as well as the interweaving of the concepts of transitional spaces, home, park, pavilion and art spaces, and of temporality, mobility, present and past. It makes it possible to reflect on the fact that the perception of space is not self-evident and its domestication even less so.

Ajda Ana Kocutar, curator of the exhibition

¹ Hyejin Jung & Soram Park (2022): “Pavilion as an architecture of new placeness: a case of Serpentine Pavilion project”, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, DOI: 10.1080/13467581.2021.2024197.

An art residency at MGLC Švicarija helps young artists to live a life and practise their art at a time that is precarious and unfavourable for young people. After the first year, we work with the artist on an exhibition project – with the request that the content of the exhibition also speaks to the artistic spirit of Švicarija. Janja Kosi has responded to the invitation almost literally. Her art practice is concerned with exploring space, its physical immediacy, its formal and constructive qualities and connections in meaning and thought. She is interested in how to domesticate a space or architecture, how one constructs one’s own place, one’s own home. The architectural features and history of the former hotel led her to think about home as a place of refuge. She built it in the ambience of the Star Studio, the former hotel kitchen, where the walls still feature painted stencilwork and the floor has the original ceramic tiles. She entered this culturally sacralised space respectfully, choosing light as her primary artistic medium. She explored the architectural details of the house, examined the blueprints for its renovation, took souvenir photographs, likely as its occupant, and watched her senses sharpen as the hallways grew darker and the wooden floorboards whispered of its former inhabitants. As a temporary resident, she was able to incorporate all this into the conception of her light installation. Its final form remains unpredictable and will change as the days shorter and the nights grow longer in the coming summer. The most permanent mark, however, remains the print created in the MGLC Print Studio with the help of print expert Jakob Puh. The screenprint, which shows the architectural details of Švicarija in a new composition, is part of one of the pavilions on display. And when the play of light and shadow in the installation From … to … comes to a close at the end of the summer, the print will transcend time and the limited space as a new independent work of art.

Dušan Dovč, curator of the exhibition

Janja Kosi (1994, Maribor) studied Painting at the Academy for Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (ALUO), where she graduated in 2016. In 2020 she completed her master’s degree with the thesis The Everyday Life of Heterotopic Space and the title of her practical piece X°Y’Z’’ N – A°B’C’’ E, for which she received the ALUO Award for Outstanding Creative and Study Achievements. She spent part of her studies on an exchange programme at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. She works in the field of visual art, painting and illustration. So far, she has presented herself in the solo exhibitions Lepidopterarium (KIBLA-artKIT, Maribor, 2022), Serving Suggestion (R Space, DobraVaga, Ljubljana, 2021), darling the roof is leaking (DLUL Gallery, Ljubljana, 2019), and in many group exhibitions, for example ECOart festival – Traceback() (Gallery Y, Ljubljana, 2022), Art Stays (Fo.Vi gallery, Kidričevo, 2021), ECO8 (UGM-MTT, Maribor 2021), Temporarily. Until further notice. (Fotopub, Ljubljana, 2020), 4WD; The Polycentricity of Painting Issues in the Works of Four Authors (Modern Gallery, Zagreb, 2020), Another Time and Place (Improper Walls, Vienna, 2019). Spatial installations and integration of different mediums are characteristic of her practice. In her work, she often explores the concepts of (non)space, home and domesticity, and the relationship between people and architecture.

From ... to ..., 2023, collage. Janja Kosi Archive.

From ... to ..., 2023, silkscreen. Photo: Janja Kosi.