Today, the human species finds itself in a multi-speed and multi-tier world, filled with countless parallel universes. Societies belonging to the so-called "developed world" are drowning in myriad content that the individual must first filter and second, must attach meaning to, through the prism of their own worldview and their experience. Consequently, the border between private and public life is becoming increasing blurred. The individual – especially one working in a creative profession – is expected to be endlessly productive and adaptable. The visual pollution and the preponderance of messages, which are hallmarks of our daily life, are leaving indelible traces on our social and interpersonal relationships, our social mores and on our way of life.
All this is plainly visible in Sašo Vrabič's art since the artist has dedicated his work to studying these phenomena by observing and depicting his immediate surroundings – both his intimate family life and his social environment. Today, these two sides can be and, indeed, often are inextricably linked. The artist is mainly interested in small and seemingly unimportant stories, intimate everyday moments and fragments of daily life, telling the collective story of the contemporary state of mind as a pars pro toto.
On the one hand, Vrabič is attracted by the generic nature of modern communication and its constant susceptibility to new content, which the individual arbitrarily monitors and is monitored in turn. Contemporary life has become, by and large, virtual. Meanwhile, the (communication) media have, in reality, become an extension of humanity. For a number of years now, the artist has therefore been depicting groups of people completely absorbed in the act of browsing on their mobile phones.
This aspect of contemporary society is only one of the components included in the Ne-bo installation – a title as layered and polysemic as the world we live in. In recent times, nothing has changed the way people communicate more than the emergence of mobile phones and other smart devices, which have become the most important gadgets in people's lives. Nowadays, almost everyone has a mobile smart device, the primary purpose of which is fast communication, but also “killing time” and/or alleviating boredom. However, boredom – a period during which we can delve into our own thoughts – is itself a creative activity, out of which new ideas and concepts can emerge. Yet, we find ourselves in a situation in which we are ruled by perennial disruptions and by our pursuit of complete fulfilment, leaving us with very little time, space and energy that might have been used for the creative production of ideas, analyses and reflections.
The concept behind the Ne-bo “total artwork”, on the other hand, is much broader and more universal, stemming from the artist's many reflections, ideas, obsessions, remembrances and desires – from those things which define an individual's status within a social collective. Ne-bo is a visual diary that doesn't rely on excessive linear narration. Rather, it uses visual cues to communicate the artist’s personal relationship with the world. It draws from the banalities and absurdities of the contemporary media landscape; from associational images created according to (always unreliable) memories of traumatic trials and tribulations linked to eternally enigmatic interpersonal relationships; and finally from phenomena, such as water and the colour blue – both representing the artist's feelings, which he associates with escaping everyday routines, reflection, and inner peace.
The multimedia and multi-layered spatial installation – which includes paintings, drawings, poetry, moving pictures, spatial elements and music – represents the eclectic nature of the contemporary moment expressed through its totality. The presented images are usually extremely ambivalent, as they have been taken out of their original context, which is tightly linked to its photographic source material. As a rule, Vrabič's paintings and drawings are based on mediated images either captured by the artist or found among the cornucopia of media images, which are then combined into a unified whole. Here and there, they seem like faithful representations of reality, frozen in time; at other times, they are more like imaginary collages.
The common theme of the exhibition is first and foremost the colour blue, which materializes as water, the sky, clouds, swimming pools and swimmers. The author's obsession with swimming pools and the people who bathe in them stems from his personal fascination with them and with what they imply. Swimming pools are places offering relaxation, leisure, joy and rest – states people usually associate with vacations and free time. Vrabič is fascinated by the potential for voyeurism afforded by looking at floating bodies in motion from down below – a point of view more or less espoused by our zeitgeist. He is also drawn by the element itself, water, and its apparent blue colour, always implying depth and mystery, something which is in stark contrast to the banality and triviality of contemporary being.
He also feels the need to analyse media images, which inevitably shape public opinion and set aesthetic standards, particularly to do with body image. This segment was examined more thoroughly by the author in his Vogue (2002) cycle. In it, Vrabič highlights the glamour (and misery) of a alluring media spectacle. In his painting Mala smrt (La Petite Mort, 2017), the artist depicts the ecstatic figure of an elderly woman during orgasm; however, her contorted facial expression could also be understood as communicating suffering, exhaustion or even the pangs of death. Behind her, we see the seductive image of a young woman dressed in undergarments, as though she came right out of a billboard. In this artwork, Vrabič tackles the omnipresent taboo of growing old and ageing, focusing on aged bodies and sexual pleasures, which the elderly still crave. He is interested in physical discomfort, triggered by self-consciousness that comes from self-awareness that the physical body does not fit the desirable image of the ideal body. At the same time, he is attracted by the almost ineffable psychophysical discomfort, which is felt with adultery – a socially stigmatized act that represents a painful betrayal of a loved one. He recreates the traumatic situation, caused by adultery, by depicting what seem like ordinary scenes from a family album and combining them with associative painting collages, containing fragments of intimate letters which the artist exchanged with his partner. The manuscript fragments in Vse mi povej (Tell Me Everything, 2017) therefore do not reveal the intention and detailed content of the short messages taken out of context; rather, they impart individual meaningful and heartfelt phrases.
The visual layout is also accompanied by a sound installation, where the author focuses on creating voices and tones, a part of his daily, artistic practice. In his artwork, Vrabič simply cannot avoid questions about the act of creation, about the link between privacy and professional obligations, between intimate family life and public artistic activities. Just as an artist's professional career inadvertently intrudes into the intimate sphere, private life also constantly invades the sphere of creation. The artist therefore analyses engagement in various disciplines, such as music and art, as well as the links between them. The musical backdrop of the installation is composed of ornate and synthetic sounds, with almost no intervention from a human voice, which runs contrary to his otherwise established practice of using vocal music and vocal rhythmization. In contrast to an ambient and content-neutral audio backdrop, the performance involves the author blowing up blue balloons obsessively – doing breathing exercises for vocalists, or "yoga for vocal percussionists", as he calls them. While, in principle, it resembles singing, blowing up the balloons represents a true Sisyphean task; rather than creating sounds, the artist produces what seem like banal visual elements instead. And yet, this allows Vrabič to combine the different areas of his work into a singular whole, areas which otherwise rarely intersect in public space, though they permanently co-exist on the personal level. The Ne-bo gesamtkunstwerk thus becomes an audio-visual allegory of the artist's microcosm, of his life and work – both tightly, almost inextricably, linked.
From catalogue Ne-bo Published by: Šiška-based Vodnik Homestead, May 2017
