by Ana Maria Negoiță, photo: Andrei Popescu
His work communicates a taciturn melancholy of the past and
acts as a reminder of the great masters of the nineteenth century. Notable is
the influence of the impressionist and post-impressionist periods, an
influence that Domen Slana translates into forms with their own personal
expression. His landscapes, being oils and watercolours show an almost
patriarchal attention to natural detail, a continued awe at the force of nature
which continues to reinvent itself and reappear in similar but different forms.
In this way his landscapes and the objects he creates reveal the
phenomenological transformation of nature. Playing with the organicity of the
elements which form the artistic material, shown in his primary form, it offers
him the possibility to decontextualize the object and to place it in an
artistic universe which is perfectly in concordance with contemporaneity. So a
branch becomes a chair, an old forgotten object which has lost any function
gains in the present day a purpose. In the vision of Slana the organicity is
structural and not formal and this is clear in the way the artist generates and
conceptualizes the object whose structure can be defined by excellency in the
abstract field.
The colour and the light are those vital elements which are
emboldening in a movement the whole sensitive organism of his works. The paintings
and also the sculpture-objects contain a lyrical dramatism which has a linear
constant rhythm which reveals in a figurative way the emotion. Remarkable is
his care for the utility of the artistic product, as the artist himself
explains his own work, to create something that can have a practical application,
emphasizing an ethical extension of the object. The disjunction between
everyday objects and the artistic object accurately contracts giving birth to
an integrated product, an object with a dual function, aesthetic and
utilitarian, practically a definition, avant la lettre of design. His
work is haunted by fantastic forms which are represented in the installation
and which can be interpreted using intelligent humour as a guideline for the
spectator. Birds and strange creatures simplified to their essence in a primary
geometrical form borrowed from related worlds populate the space in a ludic
way.
The artist with unusual shyness regarding the “Madding
Crowd” of the big exhibition reclaims for himself the space to create in a
typical rhythm and to avoid competition which defines success using a form of
public exposure. As he declares, he does not only create for himself, instead
he prefers that everything he does finds its purpose which is to satisfy a necessity,
to create an emotion without it being necessary to engage in an intellectual
process about the artists intention.
Even though we are speaking about furniture, painting or
sculpture the way that the designer, Domen Slana thinks continues to create
around his object a stage ambience which involves the public, at the same time
offering to the object independence from his own artistic view. Once out of his
studio his works become independent and have the capacity to be useful. The
ergonomicity of the furniture is the main criteria but this does not disturb a
subtle process of mimesis of nature, an almost cathartic process
and this gives to each object a sacrosanct property. The materials that he uses
such as wood, metal and stone are not empty of their symbolic extension, a
certain awe exists which is generated from this deep respect for nature within
the modality he uses. Slana does not brutalize the material, he integrates
them keeping their apartness. The wood, the metal and the stone are preserving
an ancestral message remembering their home, nature itself. In this way
apparently they seem temporarily borrowed by the artist to create a chair, a
table, a cradle or any imagined object which will be used in everyday life, the
artist seems to borrow for the quotidian fragments from nature transforming
these fragments into objects but into art at the same time and this project
seems to be the symbolic definition that the artist himself gives to the
concept of design.
A visit to the picturesque town of Škofja Loka offered us
the pleasure to talk about art, nature and muses with the artist Domen Slana in
his studio, a unique experience from which we quote an excerpt.
So what is your speciality, what are the most interesting
aspects of your art in your view?
My base is my surrounding, you know, I paint mostly
landscapes, mostly water landscapes because I live by the water… and it’s
difficult to say because I have periods where I concentrate on one thing and
then again I start something else, sometimes I combine, it’s hard to say what
is the main thing.
Especially in making this chair I noticed that you used a
lot of recycled things?
Yes old farming things
So do you have an ideology or an affiliation to the eco
movement in art?
I don’t know. It just happened that these kinds of things
interest me, I like a lot wood as a material and I like to do something with
beautiful things that would go to nothing unless I gave them a new meaning and
a new function.
Do you generally integrate popular tradition or the
heritage of the area?
Mostly, mostly.
What’s the greatest memory you have about the impact your
art has had?
If I earn some money (laughs loudly.)
When you earn money you certainly remember?
Mostly I’m happy when someone I admire gives me good
thoughts about my art.
Especially to people in Romania who may not be familiar
with you, do you take part in public and civic activities?
I don’t say art should not be like that but personally I am not the kind of man that would be an art activist because I believe art is too intimate a thing to be involved in such instances and also my way of art is not in this manner because I am not a political person and I don’t want to be.
”If you work a lot ideas come by themselves if you only wait for an idea there would be nothing… because ideas come through work.”
Could you explain your chairs which you are most famous
for, how do you start working on them? Why chairs and not something else?
It doesn’t really matter because I see my chairs as useful
sculptures but it’s quite hard because when making chairs you have to consider
that it should be useful and I don’t want to make a chair that is not useful
because otherwise I think I should do something else as a sculpture like a
sculpture, not a useful sculpture, if I make a chair I want to make it useful.
This chair for example is very comfortable because it’s
a very nice chair?
Ergonomically speaking…
Do you have any particular artistic dream you haven’t
fulfilled yet would you like to do something that you didn’t manage until now?
Well I don’t have any big plans because I think things are
coming by themselves, I think you develop as an artist through your work. If
you work a lot ideas come by themselves if you only wait for an idea there
would be nothing… because ideas come through work.
Is there a routine or a specific pattern of your work? Do
you have a tight schedule? Do you work whenever you like?
No I don’t have a tight schedule. I’m not that kind of
person.
So you may work ten days in a row and other three days
not work at all. Of course it’s very random I mean it’s no routine, unless
something has to be done.
What is the purpose of your lifestyle?
It’s all connected, I don’t take it as work the people take
something they don’t like to do, I enjoy work, I like work.
How do you sell your art how do you make people notice?
Do you have regular exhibitions?
Slovenia at the moment is a very art unfriendly country.
Why would you say unfriendly?
Because if I compare past times it was much better for
artists, it’s, I don’t know, people don’t have a lot of money; other things
became more important for them. We are bombarded all the time by all these
stupid commercials, all these stupid things became more important than some
spiritual things and so on and that is the consequence I think.
So is it harder to sell?
It’s much harder!
Than 10 or 20 years ago?
It’s much harder, the past times it was much better. Also
the country the government policy is very, very unfriendly for artists.
And what about your presence abroad?
Well if I’m honest I sold much more of my chairs abroad than
here in Slovenia.
Nobody is a prophet in his own country
Yes probably, probably.
