The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, from Book 10 of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, can be regarded as a symbolic thread running through artist Jaka Babnik’s latest exhibition project.
It should be stressed from the very beginning that this exhibition is not in any way a direct appropriation of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Rather, the myth serves as a symbolic backdrop, facilitating in both substantive and formal terms a reflection on the relationship that invariably arises between the chosen object, its photographic image, and the space in which they are viewed. Given that the myth ends with a representation of a state of perfect fulfilment – Pygmalion’s relationship with his own creation, Galatea – Babnik’s latest project can be understood as a direct criticism of the relationships and mechanisms underlying the values of contemporary society.
None of us can return to a state of innocence: we cannot free ourselves from the ideas and symbolic values that dominate our everyday lives, but we can question them, and judge them. The selection of the objects Babnik explores either by means of their actual presence or through their photographic images is therefore of central importance. Each of the objects or their photographic images exhibited has a very specific symbolic value that can only be recognised within the context it has been taken from: Tacitus’ “Germania”, ex-voto figures from the Church of the Mother of God at Mount Brinjeva gora, Tina Maze’s Olympic gold medal, a silicone breast implant, a voting box from the 1990 referendum or a tiny fragment of the Berlin Wall, to mention just a few. Rather than concerning himself with an object’s physical appearance, Babnik focuses on the symbolic value attributed to it by long-established social norms.
Spletna stran uporablja piškotke. Z nadaljno uporabo strani smatramo, da se z njimi strinjate. Več
Kaj je piškotek? Skoraj vsako spletno mesto uporablja tehnologijo piškotkov. Piškotek je majhna datoteka, ki shrani internetne nastavitve. Prenese se preko brskalnika med prvim obiskom na spletnem mestu. Ko se naslednjič vrnete na stran preko iste naprave, lahko brskalnik preveri, ali je soroden piškotek prisoten (torej tisti, ki vsebuje ime strani), in uporabi podatke iz piškotka ter jih pošlje nazaj stran. To omogoča spletnim mestom , da prepoznajo, da jih je uporabnik že predhodno obiskal, in v nekaterih primerih temu prilagodijo prikazano vsebino.
