Emil Memon, Saintly Body |
Loža Gallery, Koper |
Opening: Friday, 4.2.2022, h. 18.00 |
Special guest: Natsumi K. Goldfish (Tokyo/ New York)
Emil Memon is a Koper-born visual artist and musician who has lived in New York for decades. He is considered to be the only Slovenian Pop art artist who is an active representative of the New York art scene.
After completing his studies at the art academies in Florence and Ljubljana, he left Slovenia for New York in 1982 on a Fulbright scholarship for a master’s degree. In the then center of world art trends, he had the opportunity to collaborate with many renowned personalities from the art world (Leo Castelli, Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, Keith Haring, Mario Merz ).
Later, he took part in group exhibitions around the world. As a member of the ATW art group, he participated in the 1994 Venice Biennale.
In New York, he maintained contact with Slovene creativity through visiting Slovene artists; among them, the NSK group, Tobias Putrih, Žiga Kariž, Barbara Borčić should be highlighted. He created a permanent installation with Tobias Putrih at the Slovenian Embassy in Washington.
In recent years, he has participated in exhibitions and projects in Slovenia and Slovenian video art programs. In addition to painting, graphics and installations, he is also active in the field of film, video and music. Just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, he returned to his native Koper, where he currently lives and works.
His personal exhibition entitled Saintly Body, which opens at the Loža Gallery in Koper on Friday, February 4, 2022, at 6 pm, will be the first concise overview of his artworks to date in Slovenia. The project was created in collaboration with various participants and external experts.
The guest curators of the exhibition are Barbara Borčić (member of the SCCA-Center for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana) and dr. Tilen Žbona (artist and professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Primorska).
A special guest of the Saintly Body project is the Japanese artist Natsumi K Goldfish, who lives and works in New York and with whom the author has been collaborating for many years. The exhibition will be accompanied by a trilingual leaflet with texts by curators and authors, as well as a single “LOVE" from the album Saintly Body in a special edition of the music label Dallas Records from Ljubljana. The project is coordinated by Tatjana Sirk, curator of OGP.
