Vesna Drnovšek in Nataša Mirtič | TWO IN A ROW

Vesna Drnovšek and Nataša Mirtič are presenting their latest graphic works at Krško Gallery, which come as a result of years of friendship and collaboration. They first studied Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, and then went on to do a master's degree in Printmaking in the class of Professor Lojze Logar. Despite the flood of new media, they have remained printmakers to this day.

The exhibition aims to show how their work interweaves and complements on various levels. Important to both artists is the longlasting procedure that leads from the matrix to the impression through various alchemistic processes. At the exhibition in Krško, they both take on a bolder dialogue with the matrix for the first time, which was initially regarded only as the support to the final impression. Over the years of practice, they have shaken off this thinking and began to perceive the matrix as a stand-alone art object on a par with the print.

Even though both artists are often designated as the successors of the Ljubljana School of Graphic Arts, they do not feel this themselves. They recognise this heritage only as possessing a thorough knowledge of the technological process. They soon began to go against and reformulate the principles taught by the Ljubljana School of Graphic Arts during the course of the development of their art practice. They do not destroy their matrices. Rather, these are in a constant process of change. We will probably never see them exactly as they are now, as they will continue to etch into or use them in a different context. We could say that the artists recycle them, and this could lead us close to a topical social issue. However, they both understand recycling within their own creative practice in their own ways: Nataša Mirtič started to combine old matrices with new ones, hence building her pictorial language in such a way, whereas Vesna Drnovšek also uses found objects to make her prints. In preparation for the Two in a Row exhibition, they began to interchange and use each other's matrices in the search for new compositional solutions. In every Nataša we find Vesna, and in every Vesna we recognise Nataša.

Text by: Nina Sotelšek, Senior Curator

Biography

Vesna Drnovšek was born in 1973 in Trbovlje, Slovenia. She graduated in Painting from The Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1997, where she also completed her master’s degree in Printmaking under the mentorship of Professor Lojze Logar in 2001. She lives and works in Ljubljana.

Nataša Mirtič was born in 1973 in Novo mesto, Slovenia. She graduated from the Department of Painting at Ljubljana’s Academy of Fine Arts and Design in 1997. In 2001, she also completed a master’s degree in Printmaking at same institution. She devote herself exclusively to printmaking, and specifically to one of its classic forms: etching. She lives and works in Novo mesto as a free-lance artist.