Solo exhibition

Rosa Barba

Exhibition Notes
8. 2. — 1. 5. 2022
Basement space
Rosa Barba
Photo © Andrej Peunik/MGML; Exhibition Notes

The exhibition by the artist Rosa Barba in the Cukrarna basement gallery marks the start of a series of projects exploring the dimensions and possible applications of sound, light, moving images, and music. 

This is our first exhibition in the Cukrarna basement gallery, marking the start of a series of projects exploring the dimensions and possible applications of sound, light, moving images, and music. The multifunctional space will be specially adapted on each occasion to enable the invited artists to use a variety of media and approaches in their exhibitions.

Berlin-based artist Rosa Barba, whose work From Source to Poem (2016) was shown as part of the first exhibition at Cukrarna, The Wonderfulness of Memory, is now presenting Exhibition Notes, an installation that fills the gallery space, turning it into a coherent visual ensemble. It includes Blind Volumes (2016/2022), a work that uses steel frames as a support, a kind of stage on which films and kinetic sculptures are displayed.

Eight further artworks are choreographed around the gallery, transforming it into a place for experimentation. The gallery thus becomes a space where the constitutive elements of film, celluloid, projector and sound are presented: elements that often remain invisible, overlooked, and unexplored precisely because they are so obvious. By placing the various components of film in new experimental constellations, the artist liberates them from their original uses. “In my work”, says Barba, “I interrogate the industry of cinema with respect to various forms of staging, such as gesture, genre, information, and documentation, taking them out of their conventional contexts and reshaping and representing them anew. In this way, I experiment with and expand time-based forms into sculptural objects or speculations, that is, into spaces that are self-organised; it is an ever-changing, ever-evolving shifting process.”

Through her use of a steel construction which is both drawing and supporting space, the artist brings a dynamic interpretation of its constituent parts to the gallery space. In so doing, she invites the viewer to adopt different perspectives, focus on the artworks individually or as a whole. Both the basic physical elements and the metaphysical concepts thus become key vehicles for thinking about film as a process, a medium and, ultimately, a message.

The exhibition includes the following works: One Way Out (2009), Color Clock (Blue): Verticals Lean Occasionally Consistently Away from Viewpoints (2012), Spacelength Thought (2012), Color Studies (2013), The Long Poem Manipulates Spatial Organizations (2014), Conductor (2014/2021), Above the Plate and Receiver (2016) and Hear, There, Where the Echoes Are (2016/2022). They are united by their sculptural treatment of the material, their constant movement, their creation of colour and sound compositions and, ultimately, the way they form a precise and sophisticated artistic whole.

Curated by Alenka Gregorič

Opening hours

Tuesday to Sunday: 10.00–19.00

Tickets

Adults: 3 €
Students, retirees, unemployed, visitors with disabilities: 2 €
Family ticket: 8 €
Admission free: children 7 and under, ICOM, PRESS

Walkthrough Exhibition Notes
Rosa Barba

You can purchase the catalog of the exhibition at the Cukrarna Gallery reception or online here.