You are cordially invited to the opening of the photography exhibition
Dušan Letnar - EXTEMPORE
November 4 at 7 p.m. in the Kamnik Center of Culture
About the author and the exhibition
We know our city and, by reducing the breadth of events, we think that we know about everything that happens in it. Dušan Letnar's exhibitions show us again and again that Kamnik hides a lot more than meets the eye. For the viewer, they shift the focus of everyday life to a different position and show him a small mosaic of Kamnik. This exhibition also completes a good part of this photographer's large stone mosaic.
The author's documentary approach captures in the lens moments that seem to many to be unimportant or completely fleeting, but nevertheless record the pulse of today. The yearling has an enviable ability to see and immortalize the photographed subject. In this, he is helped by the ability to observe effectively and excellent storytelling, which always place us directly in the place of the action.
This time it is presented with artist renderings. A fleeting and completely superficial look from the viewer would think that it is a series of portraits of (stone) painters, but the exhibition is much more than just that. Dušan Letnar participated in extempore art meetings in Kamnik as an observer. He photographed artists at work for the first time in 2015 and continued 4 years later. Since then, he was a regular (co)participant in meetings where he recorded painters and their work.
As he himself says, he prepared for the photo shoot. The latter is also evident from the recordings. It seems that he did not disturb the renderers at work or ask them to pose for him, but took photos from the side, next to their work, immersed in the creative process. In this way, he captured the true meaning and purpose of painting extempore. The articles published in the media after individual events did not (or could not) report on the actual process of creation of the art works. Letnar lyrically portrays the latter in his recordings. He captured the focus of the subjects, peace, contemplation, and thus also their emotions. Some people noticed the photographer, others didn't. The viewer is thus appealed to the same concentration in which the painters found themselves, and at the same time is placed in an almost voyeuristic position of watching the silent creation of the work of art. With the photographs he made, he simultaneously places the viewer in the moment of rendering right next to the painter, and at the same time, through the medium of photography, he constructed a temporal and spatial distance from the event itself, thus preserving the authenticity of the moment.
The almost reportage photographs do not only represent artists from Kamnik, but the sharp observer's eye also recognizes individual locations of art meetings. In the foreground, of course, there are painters, but in the second we recognize Veliko, Malo planina, Mali grad, Mekinj monastery. Through the exhibited photographs, the author continues his research into the legacy of the local environment - he shows Kamnik as Dušan and his eyes see it - they only show the heart of his interest, which is also reflected in his solo photo exhibitions.
The exhibited photographs continue the solidity of his author's poetics. He continues his artistic vision with depictions in black and white photographs, which are his hallmark and his specialty. With carefully selected analog photos, he stands alongside modern digital and continues his own artistic expression, which preserves the charm and attitude to photos. He himself produced silver-gelatinized photographs on baryte paper with artisanal precision in the darkroom. Thus, with the choice of technique, the process of creation of the exhibited depictions is also closer to the creation of paintings that are created from under the brush of the depicted. And this is where his creative nature is hidden - the essence of an artist who works (also) for artists.
Letnar's entire oeuvre of analogue photography, to which he remains faithful, is sincere, focused with a precise sense of framing, rarely impulsive. In any case, it is intertwined with the author's intuition, which materializes the photographer's (co)location in the moments he depicts. The latter also allows the viewer himself, to whom thinking and feeling are also translated.
Anže Slana
