VELCROLAND, site specific

By putting Velcro instead of canvas on blind frames, Josipa Štefanec varies the traditional form of painting and creates layered black surfaces that can be glued one to another. The materials from the fashion industry have been a source of her inspiration for a long time, and in her previous work she tried to link in a visual and a tactile way the impression of soft and hard, that is of firm and decaying. That is why these 'paintings' that stick to each other, at times with minimal surface (which indicates the power of the Velcro) seem as paused explosions. The dispersion of the objects that support each other because of the type of the material in a stable collapse, as well as possibilities of the articulation of space, the transposition of mass from one wall to another, their merging in different angles and the building of a construction provides the work with a sculptural character. Although these are not paintings, the shape and construction of the canvas are a strong shaping archetype, so the association ''painting sculptures'' is inevitable. In the history of ''the painting as an object'', after its cutting and burning it here becomes a constructive, accumulative element, its shape does not have a meta - Art Informel aggression, an excessively fascinating aesthetics of violence and pointlessness, but is a unit of a ludic variation. False revolutionary breaks of 'the death of the painting' and 'the return to the painting' can also be perceived in this way, as a transition from destruction to construction. The point of this reification is actually a traditional aesthetics, the meaning in the form itself, even expression, not on a semantic or a world view level, but in decoration (like the Baroque applied arts).
Velcro is a new texture, so despite the equal blackness of the surfaces there is a tactile difference between the course parts that support and the fluffy parts that are supported, which gives the work another dimension. The dirt from the surroundings gathers on the surfaces very quickly, making the object an indicator of space, giving them life, dirt and a sort of interaction, so these installations are not a sterile and lifeless design. The merge of textile and sculpture, the static and dynamic leave a space for thinking about their meaning. The temporality and the construction material promise different combinations and the author's merging of differences represents playing with tradition, with the relevant in art, and that is form and material and the possibilities they can bring.
(By Feda Gavrilovic)