Damijan Kracina

Thirteen artists work at the MGLC Švicarija creative and residency centre. Their works are shown in the From the Studios series. This time, sculptor and intermedia artist Damijan Kracina is presented with his installation piece Navigation.

Damijan Kracina is a sculptor whose multimedia practice presents possible and utopian scenarios of life on Earth. His exhibitions are imaginary ambiences and fantastical worlds that each time create new dialogues between the works, the space and the visitors. At MGLC Švicarija, he presents a charcoal drawing in the vertical space of the former hotel. The piece portrays a navigation of inorganic and organic forms, typographic signs and compasses, which are intended to steer the ship we find ourselves on, increasingly heading in an unknown, off-course direction.

Damijan Kracina's last comprehensive solo presentation was the exhibition Wrong Ship in the monastery church of the Božidar Jakac Gallery at Kostanjevica na Krki (29. 9. 2023–25. 2. 2024). The installation, like a cabinet of wonders – or, as the artist put it, the set of a science fiction film – included paintings, objects and spatial installations that, with fantasy and utopian messages, predicted possible future scenarios for the living beings that inhabit planet Earth. The artist is distinguished by his authorial intent to create an imaginary world, in which we can find refuge and make up our own rules. Wrong Ship sums up the general state of society, nature and the times in which we live when everything is going wrong and we have been put on a ship whose itinerary is heading in the wrong direction. All that remains is awe and amazement that we humans (can) still exist at all.

The central position in the exhibition was occupied by an eight-meter painting, conceived as a navigation tool with compasses and rotating elements. The painting has now been given temporary wall space at MGLC Švicarija, which, following the renovation of the former Tivoli Hotel, accommodates larger-scale installations. A skylight, newly added during the renovation, bathes the work in natural light, highlighting its details and directing the viewer's gaze, much like the magnetic forces of a compass. Yet, beyond the immediate message of the piece, we can discern the artist's enduring creative idiosyncrasies and intentions. A pars-pro-toto reading of the work leads us to connections with Kracina's earlier works and projects.

Let us first focus on typography, with which Kracina has a special relationship. He is the author of the first indigenous Slovenian typeface Proteusfont (1997), formed from the bodies of human fish. The Proteus font demonstrates the artist's empathy and commitment not only to environmental protection, but also to symbolically honouring the national building blocks of Slovenian identity.

The second artistic medium is colour, predominantly monochromatic or achromatic. In the case of Navigation, this effect is achieved with charcoal. Kracina typically produces his sculptures in white-tinted epoxy, stone and terracotta. Nevertheless, he is not strictly committed to monochromatic use – recall the Galapagos project (together with Vladimir Leben, 2004–2009), where a multimedia ambient installation used colour to stage an exotic island and the evolution of animal species.

The third emphasis is on form, particularly the combination of inorganic and organic structures. Navigation combines the geometric shapes of the hemisphere and the ring with an organic skeletal construction. The entire composition is reinforced and defined by a thick wire that intertwines the skeletal spokes and the openings in the rings. Kracina's drawings are optical labyrinths concealing recognisable or imaginary animal forms, drawn as anatomical studies or scientific illustrations. This approach objectifies them and removes their threatening character toward humans. If anyone poses a threat to anyone, then it is humankind that exterminates living beings. This issue makes up the basis of Kracina's work, to which he returns again and again, for example in the video Thylacinus Cynocephalus (1996; 2016, reworked for the PORTIZMIR International Contemporary Art Triennial). The video is a reconstruction of the movements of the Tasmanian tiger, which was wiped out in 1936. Or even in his earlier work Interview with an Endangered Species (1997), an underwater video of a marble trout.

Kracina's final means of expression is multimedia – Navigation can appear on its own (at MGLC Švicarija) or as part of a group or multimedia installation (at the Božidar Jakac Gallery). Already as an undergraduate of Sculpture at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Kracina made a sound entrance as a multimedia artist at Kapelica Gallery (1995) with the project TV Damijan Kracina. At that time, he screened footage of run-over cats, stared at by a sculpture of Damijan Kracina. Media imagery in the 1990s was brutal, with direct depictions of violence; today we have sadly become desensitised to this brutality.

Over the years, Kracina has refined his artistic expression, stripping it of its oversaturation with imagery and instead becoming more self-restrained in his use of form and colour. The message remains the same – humankind is on the wrong ship and travelling in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, we are still unable to properly steer the course of navigation.

The artist wrote about the work Navigation: "There was a ship, it had an engine, a propeller, controllers and cargo to carry. There are maps of some kind, but it is not clear whether they are blueprints of the engines or a map of the landscapes. There is evidence that this ship had an important mission. But something went wrong. And then there is the navigation, a kind of bio-tech compass with rotating elements on which there are faintly preserved words and navigation signs. If we look closely, there is something written in Japanese, or perhaps Sri Lankan, over the letters of the Latin alphabet. We cannot decipher the characters, so we do not know how this device works and unfortunately, we do not have any instructions for use."

Damijan Kracina (1970, Kobarid) is an academy-trained sculptor and Master of Arts, working in the field of sculpture and multimedia art. After graduating from the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in the class of Professor Dušan Tršar, he received his Master's degree in Sculpture and Video in 1999 under the supervision of Professor Lujo Vodopivec and Professor Srečo Dragan, also at ALUO, and was honoured with the Prešeren Student Award in 1995. After completing his studies, he continued his education abroad, including in New York, at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque and at the Santa Fe Art Institute in Santa Fe, USA. In 1992, he co-founded the Provokart art group. He later established the Artilerie Kluže art centre and was its artistic director from 1997 to 2000. Together with Alenka Pirman and Jani Pirnat, he co-founded the Domestic Research Society art group in 2004, which is still active with various engaged projects. In 2015, he founded the Last Museum of Contemporary Art in Logje, where he exhibits his own works as well as those of other artists. Since 1994, he has continuously exhibited in solo and group shows in prominent national and international galleries and institutions, with around 200 exhibitions to date. Some of his works have been realised in public spaces in Slovenia and abroad. Since 2010 he has been a professor at the Secondary School of Design and Photography in Ljubljana. He has been a resident in the sculpture studio at MGLC Švicarija since the Centre's opening in 2017. He received the Ivana Kobilca Award in 2022 for his most recent production. He lives and works in Ljubljana.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday, 5 February 2025 at 6 pm at MGLC Švicarija. Helena Tahir's exhibition The Last Sector II will open at the same time.