Sixteen monumental photographs, completed by massive black frames, fit in very well in the otherwise ungrateful space of Mala galerija, managing to outshout with its intense screaming the numerous extra spaces of this corridor gallery. As is evident from the title of the exhibition, the three collaborators (“handcrafters and commercialists” is how the author of the accompanying notes, Petja Grafenauer, dubs them) try to shed light – quite literally – on the less familiar corners of Slovenia’s capital – the large landfill site operated by Snaga, the cellar of the Union brewery, the Fužine power plant, an operating theatre in the Ljubljana Medical Centre, the Jožef Stefan nuclear reactor, etc. These are for the most part intensively planned night scenes, which are given meaning – beside the unusual locations and specific viewing angles – by more or less exposed “agents” using these spaces, completing and, in a way, defining them. The staged photographs refer to the narrative enactment of historical events, with work being the predominant event in our case. Work, that is to say, which is, due to the artistic and photographic means used, depicted as an illusion, as a fairy-tale or a sort of a “merry-go-round”, where everything is just a game and anything is possible – until the lights go out. The main motif, namely, is not the city as it is, anymore, but the city as presented by the artists – Ljubljanaland, a theme park without limits.
