Tugo Šušnik: Nexus

Tugo Šušnik, Abraxas, 2008/1, acrylic on canvas, 230 x 390 cm
Photo: Miha Benedičič

21 April - 29 May 2011
Moderna galerija / Mala galerija, Ljubljana (Slovenska c. 35)

Curator: Igor Španjol
Opening 21st April at 8 pm

Šušnik's extensive and profound knowledge of Western European and, above all, American modernist painting has earned him the status of the foremost Slovenian "new image" painter. Currently he is considered one of the most important painters of high modernism and postmodernism in Slovenia. In his recent works, some of which are displayed at the Mala galerija, he is pursuing the idea of synthesizing his artistic experience to date.
"In such a selective system as artistic creativity is, the individual's memory interweaves without precedent establishing itself within the crowd of differing and inaccurate patterns, the incessant re-categorization and modification of the selected forms of intersecting memories in the cerebral structure of individual 'brains', an indispensable individualization is going on because of one's own postulation in this lateral-material world of parallelism," is how the artist describes his recent work.
Tugo Šušnik (1948) spent his youth in London (1956-65) and New York (1965-68). He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he also completed postgraduate studies in 1979. In 1979 and 1980 he studied at the Pratt Institute in New York on a Fulbright scholarship.
In 2004 Šušnik was appointed full-time professor of drawing and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana. He has staged over 50 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 160 group shows. In addition to painting, he works in set design and writes texts about his work.

The exhibition was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.