JOSIP ŠURLIN
Six Slabs, 2015
six objects; glass, black enamel, dust, 110 x 80 cm (each object)
photographs: Ivan Kolovrat
Six Slabs is a series of six glass objects placed on rubber door seals (located beneath the objects). These flat objects are treated with black enamel paint and dust in order to create textured surfaces. As an important addition to the paint used in this work the artist choose and collected dust from desolate rooms or basements. Afterwards, by introducing dust particles into the enamel, an abstract reflective coating is achieved that, finally, covers glass sheets. The result is an organization of space in which these dark reflective rectangles seem as if “floating”, due to them being balanced on rubber door seals. By using a combined dust/enamel medium the surface and structure of these objects becomes transformed and the change of places, from basement to gallery, becomes a shift of traits found in one space and recycled in the other. In the end, recycling fragments found in derelict rooms and turning them into fine esthetic forms stems from the idea of preservation. Preserved by paint and fixed on glass this, once forgotten, dust powder becomes a new abstract composition. Here, something so lost or destroyed is used as new factor for creation.