ABOUT
How do we cope with reality in which every effort to think outside the prevalent socio-political paradigm, offered as best of all possible worlds, is disqualified as mere childish reverie? Where is the boundary between the attempts to leave the confines of the everyday and illusory utopia? In order to explore this boundary, Mark Požlep sets off on a journey, which acts both as a thematic and formal element: not only are his works literally constructed as travel journals, but they are intense processual explorations, based on long-term examination of his own artistic position. Like an anti-hero of the Beat Generation, Požlep responds to the existential social crisis with his artistic expeditions, which are not driven by an escapist reflex, but rather by a need to critically enunciate his opposition to the status quo. All of Mark Požlep’s explorations can essentially be expressed with the question: what is it that gives us power and motivation for action after the end of the great meta-narratives? The answer that lies in his works is never proscribed or even articulated. They instead absorb us with their contagious force of courage, thus reanimating our dormant need for the active creation of meaning.
Vladimir Vidmar (Part of the exhibition text Promised Lands)
