At Plečnik House: To Decide Where the Shadow Falls

Plečnik House 18. 10. 2024–26. 1. 2025

• Bart Lunenburg, Guidelines no.2, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Lights are on but nobody's home no.1, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Lights are on but nobody's home no.2, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Lights are on but nobody's home no.3, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Windows should be white and clean, 2024

• Bart Lunenburg, Guidelines no.2, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Lights are on but nobody's home no.1, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Lights are on but nobody's home no.2, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Lights are on but nobody's home no.3, 2024
• Bart Lunenburg, Windows should be white and clean, 2024

Bart Lunenburg, an innovative and promising multidisciplinary Dutch artist of the younger generation, is invited this year by the Plečnik House in Ljubljana to participate in a series of contemporary interpretations of Plečnik's heritage. The exhibition is a collaboration with RAVNIKAR, a contemporary visual arts gallery, and supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Slovenia and the Dutch Mondriaan Fund for visual arts and cultural heritage.

As part of his international residency at the MGLC Švicarija in April and May 2024, the artist Bart Lunenburg has spent an extended period in Ljubljana researching, reinterpreting and recontextualising Plečnik's architectural heritage through his own perspective.

Lunenburg's multidisciplinary artistic practice is largely concerned with architecture and its associated visual imagery, the absence and presence of buildings, their memories and histories. By interweaving architectural history and heritage with his own personal observations, Lunenburg creates artistic pieces that explore the complex relationship between people and their natural and constructed environment.

He first visited Ljubljana some time ago and instantly, without much prior knowledge, became fascinated with Plečnik and our treatment of his life and work. In To Decide Where the Shadow Falls Lunenburg reinterprets Plečnik’s oeuvre through architectural and ecological elements such as Slovenian tradition of apiculture and Plečnik's relation to certain tree species in Ljubljana, all the while connecting the architect’s material heritage with the enduring image of a hard-working private individual, a renowned figure of brilliant genius, embedded in the fabric of this city and country.

“Bart Lunenburg's artworks include subtle hints at specific buildings, a tree, a drawing tool, textile references, and anecdotes from Plečnik's life, ultimately seeking to understand how all of these aspects combined affect our perception of the (natural) landscape of Ljubljana – or, if we consider these elements in a more universal sense, of any city – to this day,” the curator Eva Simonič from the Ravnikar gallery wrote about the message of the exhibition. The artist Bart Lunenburg highlighted that, among other things, he was interested “in the question of to what extent the persona of a single architect, with his individual preferences, fears, desires, and political ideology, determines how we experience private and public spaces in a city. And in what way is the city an arena between, on the one hand, ‘buildings as sculptures by the architect’ and, on the other hand, a comfortable and pluralistic living environment? Or, simply put, how do we live in the sculptural dream of an architect? Sculptures that historically have almost exclusively been made by male architects?”

Ana Porok, curator of the Plečnik House, adds that Lunenburg “has sought to discover and reinterpret the narratives surrounding Plečnik's personality and creativity, being aware of his role as an external observer. His ability to intertwine various disciplines and create fresh perspectives in this well-explored field promises a unique experience that will encourage our visitors to rethink Plečnik's heritage and its significance in a contemporary context.”

The exhibition consists of several self-contained series composed of photographs and sculptures. Each series forms an autonomous spatial installation that is simultaneously connected to the others, meandering through the rooms of Plečnik House, which was once a secluded home for the architect but is now, in stark contrast, a museum dedicated to preserving both Plečnik's possessions and his spirit. The exhibition is both a poetic, visually driven interpretation, with the simple objective of creating beauty, an endeavour Plečnik would most likely approve of, as well as an attempt to map the network of both real and constructed histories concerning personal and sociopolitical circumstances that permeate the architect's extensive legacy.

Last guided tour with the artist:
Plečnik House | Sunday, 26 January 2025, at 11:00

Posted November 8, 2024