latest uploads: 9 April 2024

Time, which endlessly creates beautiful abstract images, is my eternal and elusive rival. The pictures are notes of experiments in which I try to get closer to this excellent creator. During my work in recent years, I am a untidy child from Benjamin's One-way Street – Each stone he finds, each flower picked and each butterfly caught is already the start of a collection, and every single thing he owns makes up one great collection. In him this passion shows its true face, the stern Indian expression which lingers on, but with a dimmed and manic glow, in antiquarians, researchers, bibliomaniacs. Scarcely has he entered life than he is a hunter. He hunts the spirits whose trace he scents in things; between spirits and things years are passed in which his field of vision remains free of people. His life is like a dream: he knows nothing lasting; everything seemingly happens to him by chance. His nomad-years are hours in the forest of dream.[1]

In hunting, I interwoven coincidences, painter's flurry and tradition.[2] I did not use tradition as a repetition of what had already been created, but in a broader sense. Tradition, says T. S. Eliot, cannot be inherited, but must be acquired. The impressions of various giants of all kinds of spirit who lived before me are thus inescapably loaded in me. During work, I am both a medium and a personality, in which impressions and experiences come together in special and unexpected ways. The involvement of the spirit of the great thinker of the past century, Walter Benjamin, in my work is so imminent.

Spatial and temporal scales come into play in these experiments. Versailles is not too big for me, eternity is not too long for me and Palazzo Contarini Polignac is my home. Turning back time made me feel at home. Thoughts about death are gentle, veils and laces take on meanings and meanings. To begin to solve the riddle of the ecstasy of trance, one ought to meditate on Ariadne's thread. What joy in the mere act of unrolling a ball of thread! And this joy is very deeply related to the joy of intoxication, just as it is to the joy of creation. We go forward; but in so doing, we not only discover the twists and turns of the cave into which we're venturing, but also enjoy this pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, rhythmic bliss of unwinding the thread. The certainty of unrolling an artfully wound skein-isn't that the joy...[3]

Natalija Šeruga Golob (2023)
pdf

[1] Walter Benjamin; One-Way Street and Other Writings, NLB, London, 1971 (Translators Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter), p. 73.
[2] Thomas Stearns Eliot; Tradition and individual talent, 1919.
[3] Walter Benjamin; On Hashish; THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England 2006 (Translated by Edmund Jephcott), p. 123.

Natalija Šeruga Golob: From the Collection of W. B.: Protocol of the same experiment from (…), t. s. (test subject) Avgusta, MMC KIBLA/KiBela, Maribor, Slovenia, 2023.

Published on October 29, 2023. (SODOBNA UMETNOST / CONTEMPORARY ART - www.youtube.com/@SODOBNAUMETNOSTCONTEMPORARYART)

Conversations about art: Natalija Šeruga Golob: From the Collection of W. B.: Protocol of the same experiment from (…), t. s. (test subject) Avgusta, MMC KIBLA/KiBela, Maribor, Slovenia, 2023.

Published on December 11, 2023. (KID KIBLA - www.youtube.com/@KIDKIBLA)

Images of Childishness have quietly crept into my work in recent years. They come from my fascination with the childishness of the spirit (the childishness of the spirit can also be found in a fine old eye the unconquered flame.* A childishness that is like a spinning wheel, a total focus and commitment to whatever it is that stunning us, without any thought of loss or gain. It is the purity of the spirit, the eternity of the moment, untainted and capable of knowing things anew. The childishness of the Spirit that is totally focused and able to interpolate in the infinitely small and bizarre.

The latest paintings The W. B. Collection, Postcards to W. B. and Addressed to W. B. are intertwined by the painterly concept and are simply the result of my passionate following of Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth of the unknown. I have always followed the idea that time, the past tense, is an exquisite and elusive creator of abstract visual images.

The recent paintings The W. B. Collection, Postcards to W. B. and Addressed to W. B. are also linked by a fascination with the childishness of the Spirit. And, of course, there is the painterly search for a balance between:
- coincidence (of materials) on the one hand,
- all the prudence of painting skills and knowledge, the craft that I handle
- and also the fusion of the images that live in me, the thoughts of the various giants of all kinds of spirit that have lived before me and are inevitably invested in me, in us. Everything that has been created up until now, including art history, thoughts, and discoveries, is surely and inevitably part of us. The involvement of the work and spirit of the great 20th century thinker Walter Benjamin is inescapable.

Natalija Šeruga Golob (2022)

* ... from a fine old eye the unconquered flame ... - Ezra Pound, Selected Poems 1908-1969, Faber and Faber, 1977, Canto LXXXI, p. 180.

What it means to succeed in life, if not this,
this stubbornness from childhood, this simple loyalty:
never go farther than what's bothering you that day, that hour.*

For a long time, the voices were loading in me, then I finally recognized them as a voice I've already known. The holy time in solitude is needed to sharpen the inner ear and escape from the rut. Without it, there is no entry into the Kingdom of Art, into books and paintings, which you then swallow along with bread. A meal that is like love, like play and a prayer, an act without a precaution, premeditation or interpretation. All this area of the spirit reaches its translations and interpretations much later.

During the long wait, I have learned ...

Natalija Šeruga Golob (2020)
(The whole text is on the page ...)

* Christian Bobin: La part manquante, Collection Le Chemin, Gallimard, 1989.

In abundance–solitude, time unsticks from me as well. I am a little girl burying small pictures on paper into the soil in the garden. I am digging small holes and placing little coloured papers in it, covering them with pieces of broken glass and burying them. There is something beautiful in the soil, in the burial.

In abundance–solitude, on the floor of the studio, I am a grown woman who is unburying paintings from the painting material. There is something beautiful in the soil, in the burial, in illlo tempore.

{In the abundance of solitude I am patiently waiting for you ... No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.*}

Natalija Šeruga Golob (2019)
(The whole text is on the page ...)

* Walt Whitman: Song of Myself, Section 49.

All these decorations and this celebration are a tribute to you. For the time when you return to the known, and when you are scattered back in time. Sorry, next time around we'll be more durable.[1]

Natalija Šeruga Golob ( 2018)

[1] “Sorry," they seemed to say, "next time around we'll be more durable." Then there were those mirrors, two or three in each room, of various sizes, but mostly rectangular. They all had delicate golden frames, with well-wrought floral garlands or idyllic scenes which called more attention to themselves than to their surface, since the amalgam was invariably in poor shape. In a sense, the frames were more coherent than their contents, straining, as it were, to keep them from spreading over the wall. Having grown unaccustomed over the centuries to reflecting anything but the wall opposite, the mirrors were quite reluctant to return one's visage, out of either greed or impotence, and when they tried, one's features would come back incomplete. I thought, I begin to understand Régnier. From room to room, as we proceeded through the enfilade, I saw myself in those frames less and less, getting back more and more darkness. Gradual subtraction, I thought to myself; how is this going to end? And it ended in the tenth or eleventh room. I stood by the door leading into the next chamber, staring at a largish, three-by-four-foot gilded rectangle, and instead of myself I saw pitch-black nothing. Deep and inviting, it seemed to contain a perspective of its own-perhaps another enfilade.

(Joseph Brodsky, Watermark, Harpe CollinsCanadaLtd, 1992, pp. 54-55.)

You know. Solitude is my support and my homestead. I don't measure time in it, I don't calculate, I don't count. There's no biography. I wander around in it, wishful for more patience. After snowstorms there comes the pure joy of new discoveries. Summer is certain to come. And the painting awaits me throughout my wanderings, already there in the future. Loyal as a dog I go to meet it.

Natalija Šeruga Golob (2012)

I WANT TO PASS THROUGH THE WOODS AT THE DARKEST NIGHT

There is no mysticism and I still believe you Louise that I create because I do not know other way of seducing.

In order to get rid of solitude, to which a birth condemn me to, I am prepared to nurture this scorned and compassion worth desire.

If I dedicate myself to all technical preparations faithfully like a dog, I will catch what I am hunting for, you are saying. And exactly this I am persistently dogged by, makes the most of me. That, what I have a premonition of and I can smell it is for sure in same others places and totally evasive. Approximations and their imitations I am capable to catch, I throw as bait. All what is created have a secret background; you can see only a surface, non-essential side. There is an access to what is expressed, but the essence always snatches away from me. So, I am offering myself.

You know, during hunting only love or downfall can disturb me.

Presents from the sky disturb routine in which I am caught day after day. One of the biggest present I got in the beginning of this year. Thanks to downfall; one of my fundamental life experiences. But the idea of death mitigates this tragic situation. Suchlike metaphysical stroll to the grave of anybody close is a lesson of wisdom. Simply, I adore downfalls, of course after healing up. Downfalls have always been displacing my way. They deliberate me and let me breathe easier.

I have deep wrinkle between the eyes on my forehead; it is an impression of what has been breathe out. Body is sly and it is betraying me. Body is a landscape.

It is lake this, my last downfall made me move my studio, I cannot say for sure what happened first - downfall or movement.

In the nearness of brushes and paints I felt seek or started crying (intensive body reaction). I had had folded not opened paint tubes for at list one year, neither dust I had wiped. World is full of paintings, the old ones, the new ones, and tons ones being created. Frames, under frames and meters of canvases. This damned largeness, which I am not into momentarily. World is too packed, loading, folding, setting up.

Being free metaphysically, I am able to cut to pieces and bury everything. In art I dwell in the word created by myself. In it I do have the power. In the real life I am a cowardly mouse, who is frightened of the darkness, of the speed, of the height. I have enough power to tear up one of the beautiful old book, placed on the altar next to the paintings Armamaxa. For this extreme action I needed downfall, which deliberated me and gave me power. For years I only had had this book, it was one of the dearest items among my overloaded luggage. Whenever I am able to throw away one of the items I had been attached to I fill easier.

No, don't worry; desire for seducing has not abandoned me. Of course, if it did, I wouldn't feel torments, but became conscious vegetating being.

I am drawing on the torn out pages, because I in no way and never give up this desire. The floor of my studio, where paintings used to be created I swapped for a chair and a desk, fearful certainty became a severe doubt.
When drawings are finished I look for words (meaning, also spiritual one, this time it follows the act of creation).

Decomposition.

The change of things, their most profound life, nourished with people's lives. Yellow faded pages of the book were easily nourished still by me. But I adore past times. I voluptuously surrender to the past, become its prey, snatch for it, accumulate it, produce from it and stuff it with the present.

They say: Life is bearable only if a man is not aware of each moment, which is going away.

I say: Bearable life I fling to the ground, we should love.

It has been in my nature and it had been even before me, that I permanently counted deduced minutes. I cannot put up with the thought that me and my dearest will not be. With the idea of death I take a deeper breath. I consider idea of death as a fountain of madness and courage.

I yearn for the sharpness of a razor, which would deeply cut into preconception. I yearn for the wisdom to be able to choose what is worth to move my little finger for.

There is no mysticism and I still believe you Louise that I am creating because I do not know another way of seducing.

In order to get rid of solitude, to which a birth condemn me to, I am prepared to grow thus despised and compassion worth desire.

Natalija Šeruga Golob (2009)