Valentin Oman (1935) is a highly recognized and distinguished Austrian artist, who often exhibits outside the Austrian national borders, most often, of course, through a triple-delineated border, which is in the immediate vicinity of his Carinthian studio in Bekstanje, in neighboring Italy and Slovenia. Exhibitions in Slovenia have an additional emotional and symbolic charge for the artist, here he has had quite exceptional presentations and is a well-known author to the Slovenian audience. This retrospective exhibition has connected three main stations for the artist: Austrian Carinthia (Museum of Modern Art of Carinthia, Klagenfurt), Vienna (exhibition centre of the K Animknstlerhaus) and Slovenia.
In an extensive retrospective review of the Opus, in which there was not even a lack of civic engagement, and chronologically pne from 60. years of the last century to the works that were created during the exhibition in Vienna and are intended for visitors for the first time in Kostanjevica.
Valentin Oman's artistic creation is embedded in the field of abstract figuration and is distinctly ontological. He constantly passes the field of the material and enters the field of the spiritual. Time and space (even state borders) are permeated with transience in his works, and this is what Oman's figuralics look like in the paintings. One of the authors of the text in the extensive catalog, art historian Milena Zlatar, characterized Oman's work with the words: "painting-relief or relief-painting, graphic print or matrix, painting or sculpture; everything is intertwined and passes from one medium to another until it connects into Oman's specialty: dialogue with spaces. It does not matter whether it is the interior or exterior of the shell, the sacral or profane space. Artifacts encompass Space, Mirror outward or inward, become the skin of the architecture that connects interior and exterior; they are like Windows through which we can look in or out".
Text: Christine Animatetzlinger-Grundnig, MMKK
Curator: Goran Milovanovi /
Photo: Tomaz Grdin, GBJ archive
Valentin Oman (1935) je izjemno priznan in ugleden avstrijski umetnik, ki pogosto razstavlja tudi zunaj avstrijskih državnih meja, najpogosteje seveda prek trojno začrtane meje, ki je v neposredni bližini njegovega koroškega ateljeja v Bekštanju, v sosednji Italiji in Sloveniji. Razstave v Sloveniji imajo za umetnika še dodaten čustven in simbolni naboj, tu je imel precej izjemnih predstavitev in je slovenski publiki poznan avtor. Tokratna retrospektivna razstava je povezala za umetnika tri poglavitne postaje: avstrijsko Koroško (Muzej moderne umetnosti Koroške, Celovec), Dunaj (razstavišče Künstlerhaus) in Slovenijo.
V obsežnem retrospektivnem pregledu opusa, v katerem ni manjkalo niti državljanske angažiranosti, in se kronološko pne od 60. let prejšnjega stoletja pa do del, ki so nastajala še med razstavo na Dunaju in so v Kostanjevici prvič namenjena obiskovalcem.
Umetniško ustvarjanje Valentina Omana je vpeto v polje abstraktne figuralike in je izrazito ontološko. Vseskozi prehaja polje materialnega ter vstopa v polje duhovnega. Čas in prostor (tudi državne meje) sta v njegovih delih prežeta z minljivostjo in takšna je videti tudi Omanova figuralika na slikah. Ena od avtoric besedila v obsežnem katalogu, umetnostna zgodovinarka Milena Zlatar, je Omanovo delo označila z besedami: »Slika-relief ali relief-slika, grafični odtis ali matrica, slika ali skulptura; vse se prepleta in prehaja iz enega medija v drugega, dokler se ne poveže v Omanovo specialnost: dialog s prostori. Ni pomembno ali gre za notranjost ali zunanjost lupine, za sakralni ali profani prostor. Artefakti zaobjamejo prostor, zrcalijo navzven ali navznoter, postanejo koža arhitekture, ki povezuje notranjost in zunanjost; so kot okna, skozi katera lahko gledamo noter ali ven«.
Besedilo: Christine Wetzlinger-Grundnig, MMKK
Kustos: Goran Milovanović
Foto: Tomaž Grdin, arhiv GBJ
