ALEN OŽBOLT Transfer S Pakung: Introspective Mix, IMP-EXP, Love Letters, Screens, Gifts, Medicines and Entities in erosion
Exposition and presentation of the monography An Introspective V.S.S.D. +/- Alen Ožbolt 1985–1995/1995–2018
ANNOUNCEMENT
The artist announced that, preoccupied with the issues surrounding the transport / transition / selection of the works – and of the exhibition itself – from Ljubljana (2020) to Dubrovnik (2026), he had decided, through the artistic operation of “packing” the Gallery within the Flora Gallery, to occupy and appropriate the space itself, transforming it into an introspective-transitional package-arrangement: a work / artistic procedure. In doing so, the entire complex system of the Introspective will necessarily have to be perceived (mentally, of course!) as “hidden”, INTROVERTED – INNER, invisible within the cardboard boxes placed on the floor of the packed Flora Gallery.
Thus masked (packed), the exhibition invokes the ancient Greek – and also Heideggerian – understanding of Truth as aletheia: concealment and unconcealment, the revelation of the “gallery-exhibits-exhibition-in-the-transitional-state-of-being-packed”, which is manifest before us. Being (Sein), packed away in an “exceptional state” of invisibility. Through this transformative procedure, the shadows / echoes and spirit(s) of an entire constellation of “crisis anticipators” are summoned (Duchamp, Manzoni, Christo, Beuys, César, Kounellis ... the spirit of FLUXUS). Fluxus – motus! Intro-speculative Minimal Art, but also resonances of Arte Povera.
The online (Slovenian: spletni) catalogue and the printed mono graph will greatly enhance the insight into the full complexity of the Introspective VSSD +- Alen Ožbolt (2020 – 2026).
YEARS
In 2020 – just before the official, administrative, “techno-medical-political” public declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic (G. Agamben, “techno-medical despotism”; “Corona”, the crown) – the major exhibition Introspective V.S.S.D. ± Alen Ožbolt was successfully installed and ceremonially opened (on 6 February 2020) at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia, EU, of course – and without the mandatory “anti-COVID masking” and social distancing!
The exhibition was accompanied, complemented, and mediated first by an online catalogue-monograph, followed several years later by a book, i.e., a printed monograph.
In Croatia, this will receive its premiere promotion and presentation in the symbolic form of a considerably smaller, more “modest”, yet highly significant and aesthetically relevant exhibition at Dubrovnik’s renowned Flora Gallery in early September of this year (2026).
The project and conceptual significance of the BOOK (the INTROSPECTIVE monograph) initiated and provided the conceptual impetus for the exhibition and promotional presentation of the V.S.S.D. ± Alen Ožbolt oeuvre in Croatia.
BUBBLE WRAP – TRANS-ARTWORK / GESAMTKUNSTWERK – IN MEGA BOX/-PIT / - INSTALLATION
All the walls will be covered with bubble wrap. The gallery will be wrapped up, “packed” for its transition into the status of an Artefact ready “to pass over” into the transcendental form of the Introspective: beyond the physical and perceptual barrier/difference (J. Derrida, La Différance).
Bubble wrap has long been recognized as a legitimate material in contemporary art and has been used by numerous artists. “Bubbles” have also been contemplated and written about by philosophers, most notably Peter Sloterdijk: SPHERES III: FOAMS, p. 412: “1. CELL AND WORLD-BUBBLE” (“…We define the apartment as an atomic or elementary egospheric form – that is, as a CELLULAR WORLD-BUBBLE whose mass repetition gives rise to individualistic foams…”); Spheres: Plural Spherology, Volume III; Mizantrop, Zagreb, 2019). Architects such as Krešimir Rogina have likewise been “working” with foams, bubbles, capsules and cells, from Japan to Zagreb, for decades. And “bubbles”, or “bubble wrap”, possess intriguing properties, not only as a relatively transparent, “airy” support for an artistic “image”, but also as bare packaging material.
For the wrapping of the Flora Gallery, the ideal width of the bubble wrap would be 100 or 110 cm. It should be installed vertically, from floor to ceiling, using nails, but with care so as not to damage it, since after the exhibition it will be reused for packing artworks, as many as it can accommodate. The author, the prominent contemporary Slovenian artist Alen Ožbolt, will bring the monograph (copies of the book) to Dubrovnik, together with representative examples of smaller and small-scale works and/or documentation, and will place all of these ON THE FLOOR – in cardboard boxes marked IMP_EXP. – as a sculptural installation within the setting of the “packed” Gallery.
This is consistent with some of his previously created and exhibited works and projects, as well as those presented in the 2020 Introspective exhibition (see the photographs reproduced in the monograph).
Of particular importance for a deeper understanding of both the exhibition and the BOOK are the texts and reflections written by the Author himself: WHY A MONOGRAPH and INTROSPECTIVE.
More about this at the exhibition opening and throughout the exhibition at Flora Gallery.
Branko Cerovac
Alen Ožbolt
Studied at Fine Art Academies in Zagreb and Ljubljana and was visiting artist at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI).
1984−1995, performed within the artistic group Do You Painter Know Your Dues (V.S.S.D.). At first, they worked as street/outdoor action artists, in 1986, they began exhibiting in numerous galleries and other spaces in the former Yugoslavia and abroad (Ljubljana, Thessaloniki, Zagreb, Bologna, Sarajevo, Salzburg, Milan, Poprad, Venice, Vienna, Graz, Munich, Linz, Bochum, Weimar, Cardiff, Frankfurt among others). In 1995 VSSD represented Slovenia at the Venice Biennale.
Has been working independently since 1996. Realised numerous diversified art projects and exhibitions at home and abroad (Ljubljana, Maribor, Vienna, Graz, Stuttgart, München, Zagreb, Budapest, Paris, Warsaw, Klagenfurt, New York, Belgrade, Trieste, Sarajevo, San Francisco, Wichita, Berlin, Bucharest).
Received various art scholarships (Fulbright Scholarship at the Institute of International Education in New York, SCCA – Soros Centre for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana, Art Scholarship of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia) and participated in Artist in Residence programmes (StudioProgram ACC Gallery, Weimar; ArtsLink, CEC International Partners, New York; Studio New York, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia).
Published several authorial 'visual essays', articles and some theoretic discourses on art, art spaces and phenomena (art catalogues, magazines: Mladina, Rival, Eseji, Problemi, M’Ars, Maska, Likovne besede, PlatformaScca, Delo Saturday Supplement).
In the 1997 edited and published a book of art statements, texts and visual texts entitled The Word of Painting (VSSD in Words) at Analecta Publishing Collection.
In 2006 published the book of an artist entitled Love Is a Battlefield, together with Žiga Kariž and Primož Čučnik, at Šerpa Publishing Collection.
In 2007, issued VSSD − 20 Years Before at Škuc Gallery, and in 2010 the book Ensembles − Three-Dimensional Rebuses / A Stone in the Sky at the Sculpture Association. In 2014 edited catalogue “Untitled” (Škuc Gallery).
In 2020 he created elaborate retrospective exhibition titled “An Introspective: V.S.S.S. (Do You Painter Know your Duty, 1985–1995) ± Alen Ožbolt (dela 1995–2018)” in the main art venue in Slovenia at Modern Art Gallery (from 6 February to 30 August 2020) in Ljubljana.
In 2025 edited and published a comprehensive and thorough book, monography entitled “An Introspective V.S.S.D. +/- Alen Ožbolt 1985–1995/1995–2018”.
He is a Professor of Sculpture at Academy of Fine Arts and Design University of Ljubljana since 2006. He was vice dean for projects and development from 2009-2013, and a Head of Sculpture department from 2007-2009 and from 2013-2015. From 2021 to 2025 he was a dean.
More at https://introspektiva.mg-lj.si/
