BUDAPEST ART FAIR – NIKA OBLAK & PRIMOŽ NOVAK – SOLO SHOW – Booth AP311 – October 17 – 20, 2024
Art Market Budapest 2024 – Park Millenaris – Budapest
Photography will be in the focus of attention again in Budapest this October
Established as its photography section in 2014, Art Photo Budapest will return to photo lovers in October as a satellite event of Art Market Budapest and as Central and Eastern Europe’s only international photography fair.
Budapest has a special place in the history of world photography, based on the fame and work of such Hungarian photographers as Robert Capa, André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, Brassai, Martin Munkácsi and others.
On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of his birth, Art Photo Budapest will dedicate a series of events to André Kertész, or rather to the impact of his life work on contemporary photography. In addition to the exhibited material on the location at Art Photo Budapest, satellite events and exhibitions as well as a conference will be included in a mini-festival titled ‘André Kertész 130 – Contemporary Mirror Images’.
Art Photo Budapest welcomes MIA Photo Fair – Milano, Rotlicht, Vienna’s photo festival, and the largest open photography festival in the world, Festival La Gacilly – Baden Photo among its professional partners this year.
SOLO SHOW – Nika Oblak & Primož Novak – Booth AP311
Nika Oblak & Primož Novak (Ljubljana) have been working as a tandem in the field of contemporary art since 2003. After concluding their studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, they continued their education in Berlin. Their work has been presented in prestigious venues of contemporary art around the world, such as: Sharjah Biennial (UAE), Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokio (JP), Istanbul Biennial (TR), Biennale Cuvee, Linz (AT), Transmediale Berlin (DE), FILE Sao Paulo (BR), etc. They received numerous scholarships and awards, among others the CYNETART Award by Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau in Dresden (DE) and in 2017 the White Aphroid Award by MMC Kibla (SI). They live and work in Ljubljana.
In their works, Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, in a humorous and self-ironic manner, discuss the absurdities of contemporary everyday life and our subjection to the traditional conventions, popular culture and contradictions of the art world. Their creative practice involves video and photography in order to create ambivalent artistic interventions and kinetic installations.
PRESENTED ART WORKS
REALITY IS OUT
2012, 73 x 42 x 10 cm, kinetic video installation
(Co-produced by: EMARE MEX, Centro Multimedia of Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, Mexico)
Reality is Out is an installation, which combines Nika Oblak & Primož Novak’s performance video, pneumatic mechanism and the actual cardboard sign, which appears as if exiting the video frame and literally entering the exhibition space.
The work is a continuum of Oblak and Novak’s exploration of the relationship between reality and fiction. As according to Zizek, today’s reality has appropriated a fictional structure.
WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHAT ARE WE? WHERE ARE WE GOING?
2019, 55 » TV, kinetic video installation
(Co-produced by: MMC Kibla, Maribor, Slovenia; ACC_R Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea; Aksioma – Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? shows a situation of performer being caught inside the screen, walking endlessly as if he is spinning a giant wheel, but awkwardly enough spinning a rectangular, a 16:9 LCD monitor, a screen among countless screens, information boards, smart phones, which flood our contemporary existence. Unconventional device appears like perpetum mobile, but alludes to contemporary definition of a rat race, an endless, excessive or competitive work, a pointless pursuit without a purpose. The title of installation is taken after Gaugin’s iconic work. Like Gaugin’s painting the installation proposes a fundamental question where the world is headed. It is an introspect of human condition.
THE SCREAM
2015, video installation, 60 » monitor
(Commissioned by: Soulangh Artist Village, Tainan, Taiwan)
Video installation The Scream is inspired by Edward Munch’s painting Scream. It shows performer concentrate deeply and then screaming out with full force. The powerful voice breaks the screen.
UNTITLED
Untitled, 2010-2020, 160 x 104 cm, series of photographs
Untitled is a continuum of Nika Oblak & Primož Novak’s regular practice of placing themselves in different roles or contexts. The series of photographs is playing with clichés present in art. Titles of individual works thus originate from typical titles, which in art are constantly being recycled, like Homage to…, Untitled, Fountain, Self Portrait… The Series is composed of photographs Fountain, after Duchamp, Nauman, Signer and many others, Homage to Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Untitled and Self Portrait (2061)