︎︎︎ STATEMENT

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            In her exhibition project "What would happen if all these images were taken away from us?", artist Neža Knez is interested in exploring media, their materiality and other properties. She is fascinated by geological phenomena and their physical aspects, which are in a way pushed out of their functions and re-territorialised into the "machine(ry)" that defines our technological media culture. Through the multimedia installation with natural and man-made materials, mechanical kinetic objects (creating moving images and questioning the inflexion of light and sound) and a play on the articulation of language within fictional structures, the artist searches for a poetics in this "other/hidden" layer of the same. She wonders how many possible forms we can find in a single thing and how they are revealed to us.


︎︎︎ABOUT THE ARTIST

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            Neža Knez (1990) obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. In her work, the artist explores the potentials and possibilities within a fictional structure that appears in actual time and space. She is interested in the relationships that take place in the process of structuring form, be it moving image, sound, language or a mixed media installation. In recent years she has spent a lot of time exploring the moving image and the space outside it, which she sees as the potential for creating situations with sculptural and cinematographic elements, sound, voice, text and its articulation. She is fascinated by the materiality of light, the intensity of pixels, the tactility of sound and the voluminosity of the gaze – their emergence through different choreographies. She first "thinks" about all this with her long-time teacher (dog) Niki.

            She has participated in numerous solo and group shows in Slovenia and abroad, and has received some of the most important awards. In 2017, she participated in the Young Artists Biennale in Tirana, in 2018 she received the OHO Group Award and stayed in New York for a two-month residency. That same year, she was awarded a two-year residency at the Creative Centre of Switzerland. She received the European I-Portunus Mobile Award (2019) and is a recipient of the Ministry of Culture Work Scholarship (2022). Her video works are also included in the DIVA Archive (SCCA). Since 2020 she has been living and working between Zagreb and Ljubljana, where she partially moved as one of the participants of the WHW Academy. In 2021, she attended RESTART (Zagreb), where she acquired further skills and knowledge in the medium of film, and she also regularly collaborates with Pangolin Studios in Zagreb.

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            Neža Knez (1990) je diplomirala in magistrirala iz kiparstva na Akademiji za likovno umetnost in oblikovanje v Ljubljani. V svojem delu umetnica raziskuje potenciale in možnosti znotraj fiktivne strukture, katera se pojavlja v stvarnem času in prostoru. Zanimajo jo odnosi, ki se dogajajo v procesu strukturiranja forme, pa naj bo to gibljiva slika, zvok, jezik, instalacija z mešanimi mediji. V zadnjih letih veliko časa posveča raziskavi gibljive slike in prostoru zunaj nje, kar je zanjo potencial za ustvarjanje situacij s kiparskimi in kinematografskimi elementi, zvokom, glasom, besedilom in njegovo artikulacijo. Navdušuje jo materialnost svetlobe, intenziteta pikslov, taktilnost zvoka, volumnost pogleda - njihova pojavnost skozi različne koreografije. O vsem tem najprej “razmišlja” s svojo dolgoletno učiteljico (psičko) Niki.

            Sodelovala je na številnih samostojnih in skupinskih razstavah v Sloveniji in tujini ter je dobitnica nekaterih vidnejših nagrad. V letu 2017 je sodelovala na Bienalu mladih v Tirani, leta 2018 prejela Nagrado skupine OHO in odpotovala na dvomesečno rezidenco v New York, istega leta pa je prejela še  dvoletno rezidenco v Kreativnem centru Švicarija. Prejela je Evropsko mobilno nagrado I-Portunus (2019) ter je  prejemnica Delovne štipendije Ministrstva za kulturo (2022). Njena video dela so vključena tudi v arhiv DIVA (SCCA). Od leta 2020 živi in dela med Zagrebom in Ljubljano, kamor se je delno preselila kot ena od udeleženk WHW Akademije. V letu 2021 se je izobraževala na RESTART-u (Zagreb), kjer je izpopolnjevala znanje v mediju filma,  redno pa sodeluje tudi s studiom Pangolin iz Zagreba.

︎︎︎INSTALLATION VIEWS

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