Joni
Reigen Zenki Joni was born as Joni ZakonjĹĄek at the beginning of autumn in the Slovenian Littoral region. After finishing high school she lived in London for two years, where she completed the Foundation course of Art at the Whitechapel Art School. In 2003, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. Since 2004, she has been working as an independent artist. After a decade of silent residences in the old villages in the Littoral region, she now lives in Bela krajina, Slovenia, merging painting and zen buddhist practice in the lived beauty of being . Since 2002 she has held a number of solo exibitions at some of the most notable exibition venues and participated in numerous national and international group shows. She has received several awards in recognition of her work.
SPIM OB TEBI / SLEEPING BESIDE YOU Koštabona, summer 2005 - winter 2006 oil on canvas 88 X 190 cm
THE LIGHT, LUX, LUMEN OF THE DAY AS THE TAPIS DU MONDE: THE EMBRACE OF GRASS BLADES Joni Zakonjek - now - continues with the artistic process, typical of her previous paintings, and nevertheless does /still/ not cease to surprise, since she is the master of the world of images to which she belongs to the very last detail. This houses artisanship, aesthetics and the obscured, hidden message of the artwork, in mixing reality and dreams, pushed to the absurd, to extreme purity, perfection of the image. This dense weaving on the surface of the painting, which expands inwards and outwards, into the depth /la profondeur/, now takes effect with the intensity of a chromatic carpet, with a coloured condense, with clumps of paint everywhere, from edge to edge of the painting / horror vacuil, which simultaneously caves in and caves out, concave and convex. The intertwining of strokes in the lush growth, in the forefront of which there is /just/ the problem of light and dark, which Joni masters in a mature artistic approach, a kind of undulation, laying and spreading of coloured clots and strokes, endless internal-external weaving, symbolic projection of concrete signs, extracted from “nature”, which come to life again in the spiritual wholeness that has no comparison in the real world, only in the artistic image.
The artist and with her the viewers are finally left to the imagination, and are ready for the jumps and journeys; to suddenly become nomads in the body and process of the painting. Painting leaves them “thousands of planes”, which are not arranged into a tree, into a realisation, but are overgrowing into spawn with countless, spiritual and sensual additions; where the “machines of desire” are at work that undermine totalitarianism, trappings of code and visual hierarchy. The network of signs is therefore the one that makes the painted objects and “figures” merge, albeit without the weight of the roots, without fundament; butterfly-like, in flight. Here we are on the edge of figure and voice, where we are absorbed and spewed out by the image. There is no inside and no outside: just an in-between that floats, a chromatic glow of entries and traces. Where any conventional or scientific approach is denounced. The network of signs is now a real point of connection and separation ... and the fire that burns up matter, in order to revive it. Bonded to the light, to the sun; and muscular - flickering, and full-empty, and symbolic and concrete. And the mask, which it is not: the matrix that gives birth ... now as if numb, now in the momentum of swift incisions. Matter, which evaporates and condenses into the pulsating of the surface, towards the outside, towards the inside, into unknowingness and towards the edges of the pictorial plane; into the swarming of colours, towards the touching of the Thing ... like the drafting of feelings, sensations, sketching of states, haptography. Touches in hovering as touching the truth: the origin of the world, an opalescent tapisi du monde in the dark.
The image become a place of haste with painting, “quilting”, and deposition, sediment. The support is a membrane, that seems to not have been painted, that is barely stable in actual fact. How to enter it, how to settle it? With the gaze, yes, the gaze. Lacan, for example, sharply separates the function of the eye and gaze. The seen [vu], he says, before that which is given to see [donne¬a-voir]. The image or painting can act as a screen, in which the subject - the observer - looks and sees himself like in a mirror. The eye is returned to the eye, but the gaze reaches further, behind the painting, into the space of the Other, into the space of the unconscious and desire; which is no longer ruled by the law of perspective and ocularcentrism. The gaze surpasses the appearance that is painted by the piction. The gaze “by which I am surprised in so far as it changes all the perspectives, all the lines of force of my world; arranges this world from the point of nothingness where I am ... into a sort of network of organisms. As the locus of the relation between me, the annihilating subject, and that which surrounds me, the gaze seems to possess such a privilege that it goes so far as to have me scotomised, I who look, the eye of him who sees me as object. Is it not clear that the gaze intervenes here only in as much as this annihilating subject correlative of the world of objectivity, who eels himself surprised, but the subject sustaining himself in a function of desire? ... We can apprehend this privilege of the gaze in the function of desire, by pouring ourselves, as it were, along the veins through which the domain of vision has been integrated into the field of desire.” (I. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis) Andrej Medved
SE ŠE SPOMINJAŠ LJUBEZNI ?/ DO YOU STILL REMEMBER LOVE? Koštabona, spring 2007- Velika sela, summer 2010 moment after moment on canvas 190 X 278 cm
‘‘Ti si žarelo, polno sončnih žarkov / in hrepenelo, dvigalo se v zrak. / a jaz sem hodil med pšenico tvojo / in trgal tvoje žive misli, mak.’’/’’While you were glowing, abundant with sun rise and yearning, rising up into the air, I wandered through your wheat and plucked your vivid thoughts, the poppy oh, so fair. ‘‘ from the poem Ljubljana’s Field by Oton Župančič Velika sela, spring 2009 - autumn 2010 - spring 2012 moment after moment on canvas 88 X 224 cm
PESEM ZA HAFISA I / SONG FOR HAFEZ I Koštabona, spring - autumn 2006 love on canvas 180 X 140 cm
love on canvas 220 X 88 cm
Koštabona, spring 2005 - spring 2007
PESEM ZA HAFISA III / SONG FOR HAFEZ III
RDEČE RASTI/ RED GROWTH
Ljubljana - Koštabona - Velica sela, autumn 2007 - autumn 2008 love on canvas 110 X 110 cm
NEBO IN ZEMLJA/ SKY AND EARTH (THE KISS) Velika sela, spring - summer 2012 oil on canvas 27 X 40 cm
MALO ŽAREČE GNEZDECE / LITTLE GLITTERING NEST Velika sela, may - june 2014 oil on canvas 20 X 27 cm
NAROČJE DNEVA / EMBRACE OF THE DAY
VIJOLIČNI ŠOPEK ZA STARAMAMKO / VIOLET BUNCH FOR GRANDMOTHER
oil on canvas 100 X 100 cm
oil on canvas 40 X 40 cm
Velika sela, spring 2012 - winter 2013
Velika sela, april - may 2014
VEÄŒERNICE / EVENING WHISPERS
BELA OBZORJA / WHITE HORIZONS
oil on canvas 100 X 100 cm
oil on canvas 60 X 70 cm
Velika sela, winter 2012 - spring 2014
Velika sela, autumn 2012 - spring 2014
BELI BOBEN/ WHITE DRUM
Velika sela, autumn 2012 - spring 2013 oil on canvas 45 X 55 cm
IZ TEMNE DOLINE SO VSTAJALI SINJI METULJI IN SE VSEDALI NA NAJINE DLANI / THE BUTTERFLIES RAISED FROM THE DARK VALLEY AND SAT IN OUR PALMS Velika sela, autumn 2012 oil on canvas 30 X 39 cm
JONINI TRAVNIKI NOČI /JONI’S MEADOWS OF NIGHT Velika sela, spring - autumn 2012 - spring 2013 oil on canvas 200 X 160 cm
from the book
KROGI / CIRCLES poems by VLADO Å KAFAR
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2002 • ZELENO / GREEN, Galerija Insula, Izola • Pretorska palača, Koper 2003 • Atelje Duka, Piran • Galerija Žula, Ljubljana • Galerija Žula, Maribor • Galerija Tenzor, Ptuj 2005 • • •
ČASENJE / CARESSING TIME, Mestna Galerija Piran Galerija A+A, Venice, ltaly POD GLADINO / UNDER THE SURFACE, Mestna galerija Labin, Crotia
2006 • •
PIJEM ČAJ / DRINKING TEA, Bežigrajska galerija 1, Ljubljana HVALNICA SENCI / A PRAISE TO A SHADOW, Galerija Celica, Ljubljana
2007 • PESMI ZA HAFISA / SONGS FOR HAFEZ , Galerija Equrna, Ljubljana • ZVEZDE PADAJO V BISTRINO JUTRA / STARS FALLING INTO DOWN, Galerija Insula, Izola 2008 • MORJE SEM / I SEA, Galerija Loža, Koper 2009 • Galerija Zlati Ajngel, Varaždin, Crotia 2010 • •
PRA ... NITI, Galerija Ivana Groharja, Škofja Loka SE ŠE SPOMINJAŠ LJUBEZNI? / DO YOU STILL REMEMBER LOVE? , Festival Kino Otok, Sončna dvorana, Izola
2012 • Poslovni center HIT Paviljon, Nova Gorica
2013 • JONINI TRAVNIKI NOČI / JONI’S MEADOWS OF NIGHT, Equrna, Ljubljana • Razstravisce Gorenje, Velenje 2015 • ‘‘CIRCLE SONGS’’ with Vlado Škafar, Pečaričeva, Galerija, Piran 2016 • ‘‘CIRCLE SONGS’’ with Vlado Škafar, Galerija Dvor, Ljubljana GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2011 • • • 2012 • • • • 2013
Galerija Isis, Ljubljana Monfort, Obalne galerije, “Figuralno, figurativno, figurabilno”, Portorož Galerija Velenje,”Pokrajina v novi umetnosti”, Velenje Kosova Galerija,”Pokrajina v novejši umetnosti”, Jesenice Sokolov don, “Ivan, dej mi rešpetin”, Škofja loka Mestna galerija Piran,”lz oči v oči”, Piran Galerija Insula,”Risba”, Izola
2002 • Galerija Insula, Izola • Pretorska palača, Koper • Palača Gravisi, Mladi, Koper 2004
• Mestna galerija,”Fragments of Happiness in Art”, Ljubljana 2014 •
• Galerija Tenzor, Mladi, Ptuj • Abitanti • Real Castello, Biennale”Arte e vino”, Torino, Verduno, Italy 2005
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• Galerija Miklova zbirka Riko, Ribnica • Muzej 25.maj,”The lwano Projects’; Belgrade, Serbia • Kulturni dom, ”Okno v svet”, Nova Gorica 2006
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Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, ”Sodobno slovensko slikarstvo / Contemporary Art in Slovenia — First generations after the year zero ” Mestna galerija Piran, 2015, ”Sodobno slovensko slikarstvo / Contemporary Art in Slovenia — First generations after the year zero ” Mestna galerija, Nova Gorica ‘‘Architecture of Soul, Body and Heart ‘‘ Summart Gallery, Istanbul, ‘‘Balkan Breeze’’
AWARDS 2003
• • • • 2008
Muzej Popodine, ”The lwano Projects, Novi sad, Serbia Galerija Equrna, ”Genius Loci 3”, Ljubljana Galerija Miklova hiša, “GeneracijaXX”, Ribnica Slovenski znanstveni inštitut, “GeneracijaXX”, Wien, Austria
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Galerija DLUM, “Topologija in likovna umetnost”, Maribor Pečaričeva Galerija, ”Olive Ground with the Red Earth”, Piran Multimedijski center, “Artexchange2008”, Rovin, Crotia 3. Painting International Biennale, Beijing, China
• 2004 •
• • 2010 • Galerija Equrna, ”Paintings from the exhibition”, Ljubljana
Award of Academy of Fine Arts for special artistic achievements, Ljubljana Award of for artistic achivements and for expanding, lifting the quality in amateur art by mentoring, Piran
2007 • •
International Ex Tempore, Piran - best work in watercolour technic 2008 The selection and invitation on the 3rd International Painting Biennale in Beijing, China
Joni
joni.belakrajina@gmail.com Velika sela 8a 8341 Adlešiči SLOVENİA