When the reality and the imaginary are confused…

Author: Irena Janysek

We enter a sort of apartment which is partly covered with wallpapers. Their patterns mainly resemble organic shapes hence plants, leaves, flowers or weeds. We could simply associate those outlines with a bourgeois interior. This suspicious apartment has no furniture. It seems to be empty. Therefore, we do not feel secure, we do not feel home. This lack of domestic objects in particular becomes confusing to us. Only the wall’s decorations narrate the story – the story of objects that we shall imagine. 

This treatment of visualization, named The near and the elsewhere, was designed by a Croatian artist, Igor Eškinja, born in 1975 in Rijeka. Moreover, this was his first individual display in Slovenia. The exhibition took place in the Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana, from April 7th to May 1st 2011, and it was coordinated by Sonja Zavrtanik, the art curator.

Eškinja’s artworks were particularly designed for the Škuc Gallery and they fit perfectly its space, creating the atmosphere of an apartment. One room relates to its neighbour. We feel the harmony. A chair and a lit desk lamp are the only real objects/furniture and together with the wallpapers, they define the interior making it warm and cosy. Although this is not a wallpaper fashion analysis, the flowery patterns please the spectators. Interestingly enough, The near and the elsewhere has a hidden meaning. Sonja Zavratnik mentions a relation to a contemporary city and this is meant to be the main premise of Eškinja’s project. She wrote: “Unexpectedly, the decorative element has become weeds, like the most banal plant, which presents the micro-cosmos at the level of the contemporary city. It imposes itself like a disturbance in the urban landscape, as entropy, as a metaphor for something which modern urbanism did not succeed in rooting out in its endeavor to achieve successful sustainable development and the integration of grey zones and degraded areas in the city”.

The notion of the contemporary city proposed by the curator may not be convincing to the viewers. In that case, I would advise to stick to this passionate contrast achieved by the artist.  The near and the elsewhere is designed to confuse the spectators, it is based on totally different poles. Sonja Zavratnik pointed out the contradictory aspects of the display, for example: illusion and reality, the seen and the unperceived, material and non-material.

Bringing up the theory of Marc Augé, the French anthropologist, non-places are spaces which symbolize nothing, they have no identity. Consequently, is the displayed ‘apartment’ not a real apartment? Is it a non-place? Certainly, it represents something. In order to make the non-place a place we need to visualize at least the absent objects or identity. The distinction is based on places and non-places, positive and negative, full and empty. Even though, the sense of balance is preserved.

The viewers exercise their own imagination. Igor Eškinja gives us some samples of the real world like patterns, some familiar forms but still the rest is undefined. The viewers finish off the exhibition with their own visualizations. Looking closely at the wallpapers, we are overwhelmed by the abundant patterns, we may associate them with richness and wealth, with the bourgeois interiors, a prosperous life perhaps. Looking back over the history, wallpaper became popular in Renaissance and belonged to the elite of societies. It always served as ornamentation, embellishing the interiors furnished with attractive furniture.