*opening: 3. 11. 2026 at 18:00*
When
Where
Hostel Celica
Tickets
Free entry
The Enigma of Photographic Image
Herman Pivk’s fundamental spiritual approach, reflected in the characteristic elusiveness of his photography, is manifested above all in his technical execution. The controlled spreading of brownish emulsion clearly transcends the confines of the darkroom, compelling the artist to develop and shape the positive image under bright, even entirely natural, light. It is in this moment that Pivec’s artistic talent finds its meaning: that innate feeling (albeit cultivated during his studies) for painting, or rather for likeness... but of what? Nature, certainly, and the events within it, rendered through a unique unveiling of conceptual dimensions and the enigmatic quality of the order and disorder of things in their simultaneous appearance and sublimation, the rare facial mask as the final yet cult-like value of photography (as defined by Walter Benjamin), surreal permutations – or inverted, alogical interpretations – in a guise resembling a collage or photogram.
Photography is thus a staging of reality (Roland Barthes), yet it also teaches us about the unconscious of vision, just as psychoanalysis teaches us about the unconscious of our instincts (Walter Benjamin). In view of the photography and aestheticism revealed to date – from the retrospective exhibition at the City Gallery in 2003 to the present – a (spiritual) connection to animalism and animality emerges in Pivk’s photography, as if from a previously unrecognised background. Although this connection within his work can be deeply intimate and vulnerable, seeking paths parallel to his primary artistic identity, it can also be perceived as an automatic echo of a contemporary world burdened by cruelty and sadism.
Can Pivk’s almost mystical animalism be reconciled, at least superficially, with the definition in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a literary allegory with distinct political connotations? Consider the first of the book’s Seven Commandments: “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.”
Herman Pivk continually surprises us as an artist with the innovative mysticism of his photographic imagery.
Curator: Aleksander Bassin
The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Ljubljana Fine Artists Society.