ISCP TalkJune 15, 2010
Salon: Nika Oblak and Primoz Novak (Slovenia) & Claudia Ulisses (Portugal)
‘The work of Nika Oblak and Primoz Novak draws parallels between a society driven by personal needs and capital and their own role as artists in the contemporary art market. Infused with humor, their work adopts the visual tactics and seductive constructions commonly employed in the mass media to lure the consumer.” Oblak and Novak have exhibited in venues such as Sharjah Biennial 9, UAE Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Japan Media Arts Festival; Transmediale Berlin, Germany; and most recently in Biennale Cuvee, Linz, Austria. (Text by Yasmen Biag-Clifford)
Claudia Ulisses’ work focuses on social and political issues. Her critical approach, sometimes nostalgic in tone, addresses the (in)flexibilities of the human condition. She develops her work through a minute process of critical analysis, creating multidisciplinary projects with a combination of media such as photography, installation sculpture and video. The form as visual seductive device is evident, but it acts mainly as an element of subversion of reality. Representation is a way to place the viewer face to face with the disconcert and ambiguity of the iconographic discourse.