The first month of the new year is always a month of reflection, analysis of past work and conceiving new projects. With the arriving new year, the Piran Coastal Galleries are also full of new plans and challenges, and above all, rich activities, exhibitions and accompanying events.
The 2022 program has been planned as multifaceted, interdisciplinary and cohesive. The spectrum of activities and connections will be strengthened in cooperation with other related domestic and foreign institutions from new fields and with new individuals, as well as with the local community of artists, to whom we will be paying special attention this year as well.
That is why our first exhibition project is dedicated to Emil Memon who was born in Koper in 1957. He is a visual artist and musician who has lived and worked on the American art scene for almost 40 years. After completing his studies at the art academies in Florence and Ljubljana, Memon left Slovenia for New York in 1982 on a Fullbright scholarship for a master's degree. In the then center of world art trends, he had the opportunity to collaborate with many famous personalities from the art world (Leo Castelli, Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, Keith Haring, Mario Merz…). 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 in the Loža Gallery in Koper 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. In addition to the two curators of the exhibition, Barbara Borčić (member of the SCCA-Center for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana) and Tilen Žbona (artist and professor at the University of Primorska), the special guest of the Saintly Body project is Japanese artist Natsumi K Goldish. At the occasion of the opening, the single “LOVE" from the Saintly Body music album will be released as a special single edition of the Dallas Records music label from Ljubljana. The project is coordinated by Tatjana Sirk, curator of OGP. More on the link…
The opening of the exhibition of Emil Memon will take place on Friday, February 4, 2022, at 6 p.m., at Loža Gallery in Koper.
Under the trademark of Prešeren Day, it will be especially lively on the celebratory day of Slovenian culture, on Tuesday, February 8th, 2022. The main focus will be on the all-Slovenian project Heritage in My Hometown and on the children and the youth from all over Slovenia, who are included in it this year as well.
Prešeren Day for the Young People will be organized by Ana Papež, curator- PCG pedagogue, Matjaž Borovničar, art pedagogue and academic painter, and Andreja Ozebek, art pedagogue. This year, the workshops are again realized in cooperation with the Elementary School Šmarje near Koper. The task of pupils / students is to present cultural heritage in their hometown with the help of their own video presentation. From the collection of their videos, we will make a short compilation, which will be continuously shown on the day of the cultural holiday, on Tuesday, February 8th, 2022, at several different locations in Koper, Portorož and Piran. The compilation will be available on the PCG facebook page and PCG youtube channel. The program will be published on this link.
Prešeren Day will be marked by two other outdoor events, namely a morning walk to the Koper’s culturally and historically significant sights. The professionally guided route will take the visitors to Tito Square, where Emil Memon's stone installation in front of the Loža Gallery in the Koper Old Town will be on display, and all the way to the pier by the public Olympic swimming pool in Koper where PCG’s famous K67 Kiosk stands. Its creator and author is the famous Slovenian architect Sašo Maechtig. He is also one of the supporters of the previously mentioned continuous screening of the heritage-themed video compilation, which will take place in the K67 Kiosk as part of pedagogical activities for the pupils / students.
In the spirit of preparations for the Slovenian national cultural holiday, we at the PCG are also pleased to announce the installation of the second statue, which was created as part of the 60th anniversary of Forma Viva. After the installation of Max Seibald’s sculpture on the Seča peninsula in October, it is now the turn for the installation of the Portuguese Mario Lopes’ sculpture in Ankaran. The statue will be placed on the meadow next to the city market on Thursday, February 3, 2022, where a protocol presentation and toast with the Malvasia Forma Viva 60 Years anniversary wine will take place at 11 a.m. in the presence of Ankaran municipal representatives.
A series of Inform Perform.Transform. coffee cups, which we made with the help of the general sponsor Capuccino d.o.o. and the graphic studio FUTURA from Ljubljana, will also be presented as part of the celebration. More on the link… The success of this international event with 60-years of tradition is summed up by a media report with digital publications available online… Creative perspectives and explanations of the statues of four sculptors, Max M. Seibald, Jure Markota, Mario Lopes and Alberto Scodro, summarizes the documentary video with subtitles in several languages, which has been realized by the documentary filmmaker Črt Brajnik. More on the link…
We will conclude the cultural day with the evening opening of the exhibition The color that winter hides at 7 p.m. in the Meduza Gallery in Koper, organized by the PCG in collaboration with the artist Lorena Matic and the Opera Viva Association from Trieste. We will admire the beauty of the natural environment, rich in flora and fauna, in the paintings of the Trieste artist Antonio Sofianopulo, also the mentor of the participating students of the Gian Rinaldo Carli Secondary School from Koper. Also on display will be photographs by Matteo De Luca, taken in the natural environment of the Soča estuary and the Isola della Cona natural reserve in Italy. More on link …
We will finish the week dedicated to culture with guided tours of two art exhibitions in Piran. On Friday, February 11, 2022, at 5 p.m., there will be a guided tour of the painting exhibition by Joni Zakonjšek, and on Saturday, February 12, 2022, at 11 a.m., a guided tour of the exhibition by the painter and graphic artist Miha Maleš. We will present the latter with a selection from his opus of art created in Piran.
In the second half of February, we would like to invite you to the opening of the theme-specific exhibition Angels or Beasts, which will be opened as part of the international project MARAVEE in Piran's Herman Pečarič Gallery on Friday, February 18th, 2022, at 7 p.m.. At the jubilee 20th edition of Maravee Folle by the artist Sabrina Zannier, which will at the same time be the last edition, this year the focus of our attention is on the presentation of art heritage preserved in our gallery depots. To this end, the curator of the Piran exhibition, dr. Majda Božeglav Japelj selected older works by three artists, László Cseri (Hungary), Bruno Paladin (Croatia) and Boris Benčič (Slovenia), from the PCG art collections, and put them in dialogue with the current production of Udine photographer Claudia Degano, More on the link…
We look forward to future exhibitions and events, as well as socializing with you!
