Overview exhibition, City Art Gallery Ljubljana

3. 12. 2024–16. 2. 2025

The exhibition encompasses the period from the beginning of his artistic career in 2000 to the present day, including Furlan’s latest production created specifically for the exhibition at the City Art Gallery Ljubljana. Over the past two decades, Furlan has established himself in the Slovenian and international art scene as the creator of the so-called cynical machines, objects, video works, and performances that are infused with socially critical content and ironic humour. His works focus on the issues of human labour in the era of automation and robotization, when humans are becoming increasingly more similar to machines. He addresses behavioural patterns within the context of daily routines and raises questions about the problem of repetitive and senseless tasks and the role of an individual’s body in contemporary society. He also stages and comments on various other pathological social conditions. The exhibition presents key phases in the artist’s creative development. Among other works, one of his most renowned and successful multi-year projects, the Wear series created from 2005 to 2015, which is a satire of the exploitation of workers in the era of neo-liberal capitalism, is also presented. The show encompasses the artist’s diverse creative areas, ranging from an expanded field of sculpture, kinetic objects, and installations to video, performance art, and an artist’s book.

Production: Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana
Curator and Text: Barbara Sterle Vurnik
Coordination and Production: Maruša Meglič
Design: Marko Damiš
Technical Implementation: Technical Service MGML
The project was made possible by: City of Ljubljana, Department of Culture
Thanks to the following for kindly lending works by Tomaž Furlan for the exhibition:
Art Collection Generali, Generali Insurance Company, d.d., Ljubljana; Modern Gallery (MG+) plus Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM); Loški Museum Škofja Loka, Škofja Loka.

More on: City Art Gallery Ljubljana

Research Residency and exhibition

Raum AU, Slovenj Gradec, May 23, 2024 to July 26, 2024

The “Journey Through Arte Utile” is organized by the non-governmental organization Raum AU, in collaboration with the Carinthian Gallery of Fine Arts and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. The research residency in the studio of Pino Poggi is a new concept for understanding the ideas and work of Pino Poggi. It is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and study of his extensive and complex body of work. In the first year, the project was explored by artists Tadej Pogačar and Tobias Putrih, followed by Vesna Bukovec and Ištvan Išt Huzjan in the subsequent year. This year, the journey begins with sculptor and intermedia artist Tomaž Furlan.

Tomaž Furlan on researching the archive of Pino Poggi and his useful art Arte Utile:
“What does avant-garde actually mean? This is the starting question for my installation as part of the Journey Through Arte Utile. Historically, it is clear: avant-gardes have been the driving force of social progress and platforms for exploring collective feelings, both aesthetic and political.

In reflecting on and formulating the installation, I focused on the importance of a broad reflection on social reactions. What is the role of art and the artist in processes of social change, and is the artwork a means of communication, a collective common point, or simply an object of desire?

If we are all Beuys’ artists, then there can be no barrier between the viewer and the artist. Their worlds are one, and interaction is inevitable. Avant-garde is empathy because it speaks of understanding the other, participation, and the need for collective work.”

The exhibition concluded on Friday, July 26, with an interactive de-installation with the artist.

Raum AU

KGLU

Video of interactive de-installation of the exhibition

Solo exhibition, Božidar Jakac Art Museum, former monastery church, Kostanjevica na Krki, Slovenia

24 September 2021-27 March 2022

The exhibition I Made This consists of spatial works created by Tomaž Furlan, sculptor and multimedia artist, who often addresses the complex relationships between humans, our environment and the everyday banalities. His latest work consists of a series of objects, with which he directly, materially and self-reflectively addresses the social dynamics between the so-called civilised society and its most common accessories. A series of sculptures, installations and spatial interventions created from robust materials, such as stone, terazzo concrete, marble and wood are on display in the Former Monastery Church.

Tomaž Furlan’s artistic practice is deeply interwoven with a humorous and ironic attitude to situations that an individual might face in his everyday life and that he is, in the spirit of the times, forced to solve in the manner of optimal efficiency. In 2005 he started constructing a series of absurd machines that share the name Wear, in which sculptured objects are used as body extremities and elements of set design in video performances. His sculptures and installations question the society of unavoidable effectiveness, in which there is no space for useless objects that do not have a practical and potentially monetary value. Furlan continues to question this topic in his most recent artworks. Within this exhibition he addresses the omnipresent idea of ‘common sense’, which is supposedly the criterion for rationality and efficiency. As a result, he presents seemingly trivial objects, which (possibly subconsciously) govern human lives. In his recognisable style, interwoven with self-irony and distanced from his own position, he exposes the absurdity of objects he created and the ideas that they represent. Due to their questionable functionality these seemingly common objects can be understood as merely (useless) works of art.

Miha Colnar

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Art fair ARCOMadrid, collaboration with P74 Gallery

26 February  – 1 March 2020

P74 Gallery proudly presents a dialogue between two remarkable artists of different generations: the innovative practice of the young Tomaz Furlan and the post-conceptual practice of the middle-generation Joze Barsi. In their work, they both deal with objectness (Barsi: from the deconstruction of the sculptural object in the mid-1990s to a shift to architectural explorations of space and their subsequent expansion into installation), the autonomy of the subject, and individualization. The title Under the Surface implies synonyms such as “basement”, “depths”, “belly”, “ground”, “groundwork”, “pedestal”, “rest”, “substructure”, etc. Tomaz Furlan and Joze Barsi both show a specific interest in the strategies of re-use: Furlan in the construction processes of his “machines” and Barsi in the post-conceptual re-examination process of copying the overlooked and ignored texts of political philosophy and art.

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