.................. CATALOGUES (pdf)

The painting exhibition From the Collection of W. B.: Protocol of the same experiment from (...), t. s. (test subject) Avgusta of the artist and painter Natalija Šeruga Golob held in September 2023 in the KiBela art space. The text about the exhibition is in pdf: Natalija Šeruga Golob: From the Collection of W. B.: Protocol of the same experiment from (…), t. s. (test subject) Avgusta, 2023.
The exhibition catalogue Vestibule contains texts written by art historian Robert Inhof and the text written by the artist herself. The art exhibition Vestibule by the artist Natalija Šeruga Golob was in Gallery Murska Sobota, Slovenia, 2020.
Natalija Šeruga Golob: Salve Regina III, Exhibition Catalogue. This Catalogue was published on the occasion of the contemporary art exhibition Salve Regina III. - Publisher: City Gallery, Nova Gorica, Slovenia. Content: pages 22 (text in Slovene & English), February, 2019.
Exhibition Catalogue. This Catalogue was published on the occasion of the contemporary art exhibition Salve Regina II. Contents are written in Slovene Language. September, 2018.
A catalogue of the exhibition Salve Regina, 2018. Exhibition Salve Regina was at the basement floor of the Minorite Church in Maribor, 2018. In the catalogue there are words from Watermark, an essay on Venice by Joseph Brodsky.
The exhibition catalogue Natalija Šeruga Golob: Dance, Blackbird, Dance represents exhibited works. Natalija Šeruga Golob creats timelessness before the universe of time, and does so in a meta-artistic manner. The emptiness of space is inhabited by a visual archetype that expresses the endlessness or the emptiness between the earth and the sky, resonating into space. It is on the incomprehensible edges of dimensions that the unique events of the transmutations of the universe take place into paintings.
The exhibition catalogue Natalija Šeruga Golob: The Return of the Native represents exhibited works. The multi-meaning paintings that have emerged as a poetic search for answers to the most taboo questions about existence, life, and death nevertheless present images of a provisional internal harmony and fusion with the universe.
The exhibition catalogue Natalija Šeruga Golob: Armamaxa represents exhibited works, paintings At first sight the bones and skulls in exhibited paintings are deceptively reminiscent of relics, which in reality they are not, since the power of relics corresponded to that of sacred paintings or sculptures. Relics were effective in and by themselves with their inherent miraculous powers, while paintings and sculptures first had to be consecrated. The Armamaxa - paintings are closer in spirit to hunting civilizations, in which bones, and skulls in particular, carried a ritualistic value.
In the exhibition Triptych Natalija Šeruga Golob exhibited poetic series of paintings Night - Nox. Artit enters the postmodern period bravely and without fear. Her series Night - Nox. is accompanied with elegiac subtitles, read in verse like poetry, like a poetic and at the same time grotesque tale of art in the dark.
The exhibition catalogue - Venue: Gallery Murska Sobota, Murska Sobota, Slovenia - Artist: Natalija Šeruga Golob - Exhibition Title: With all Eyes the Existing is Looking out, into Openness - Date: October 17 – November 20, 2003.
The exhibition catalogue - Venue: Maribor Art Gallery (UGM), Maribor, Slovenia - Artist: Natalija Šeruga Golob - Exhibition Title: Pain and Passion are on the Same Circular Line - Year: 2003. In this exhibition catalogue Natalija Šeruga Golob represents paintings on which could be that she softens taboos, terror and fear and she gives them meaning with her aesthetics.

 

 

 

 

INTERVIEWS & TALKS  (slo)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Natalija Šeruga Golob in the video is talking about her process of creating artwork. Her process of creating art starts very simply — it is through books. I wrote a lot of sentences, I do a lot of reference work and gather a lot of source material. I start with one color, and from there, try to create a sort of creative flow.

 

video: 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. (CONTEMPORARY ART - www.youtube.com/@SODOBNAUMETNOSTCONTEMPORARYART)



 

 

 

In the video Natalija Šeruga Golob is talking about her approach to painting. The creative process is to maintain spontaneity. And she approaches every painting with the idea of time. She wants the paintings to look old and decaying, like time was the creator of them.

 

video: 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)



 

 

 

 

 

 

In video Natalija Šeruga Golob is talking about her artwork Salve Regina III. Published by CONTEMPORARY ART, Platform for Contemporary Art, Life and Risk, on March 2, 2019.

 

video: Natalija Šeruga Golob: Salve Regina III, CONTEMPORARY ART,
(Platform for Contemporary Art, Life and Risk)
Published on March 2, 2019



 

 

In video Natalija Šeruga Golob is talking about her artwork


Salve Regina is a piece of art which I have been knitting for the last three years. It is the third in the series of three. The Installation in the City Gallery in Nova Gorica has opened me the door into something new and I am hardly waiting to return to my studio.


Firstly, I would like to point out that verbal and visual never correspond. My talk can take you completely somewhere else than Salve Regina is supposed to take you.


If the process of thinking is being weaved, I would like to weave some threads here.


The first thread is the thought of the famous art theorist James Elkins who stated a bold thesis: “Not the words and thoughts about paintings are important, but are the thoughts and words on the process of creating.”


The second thread has for ever been with me, which I articulated when I met a thinker Walter Benjamin. He speaks about aura of paintings. But I was even more attracted to his idea that paintings had never been meant to be simultaneously observed by the crowd but by one or only a few observers. Until the first crisis of painting in the 19. century paintings had been at home in churches, manors, castles, where the access to them was not allowed to everybody, it was hierarchical, and were not exposed at all time.


The next, the third and the most important, the main thread is childish anger, sadness, but today it may be related to unconditional surrender, capitulation to the great force, which eternally gives and takes and like it is on carousel, on which we are so and so for a short time, and it kicks us out whenever it feels like. And together with my favourite poet Walt Whitman I am singing a hymn to this force, it is a hymn to death.


The following is thread of cemeteries. Recently I have found fabulous beauty, which is even more than beauty, in the large, old city cemeteries. Not being only a beauty, but something more, is imprinted in me and accompany me to my studio. And therefore returns to Venice are unavoidable.


After all, comes my favourite thread: coloured pencils. I mean painting pigments, which enables me to create something I am not able to create with my head and conscious, painting material and coincidence carry out much better and even more deeper than I could have been bold to imagine.


So, those are the threads, there are even more than these, let it stay like it is.


The title Salve Regina was chosen because the words firstly sound and then they mean. Salve Regina firstly sounds beautifully and then it means exactly what I was looking for.


Let me salute the force; Walt Whitman says that he sings a hymn to death, so Salve Regina is a hymn.


Salve Regina is composed of a few segments. One presents paintings named Shrouds, large-scale sawn canvases, then, there are small-scale paintings named Mirrors, made on ordinary meaningless wooden frames. At the very beginning I knew that I would not hang them on the wall, but lie them down on the medieval reading shelves or to pews. These pews were made by my father, according to my instructions. And they remind us of what they remind us. And small paintings lie on them. They were created by the same key as the big ones. Of course, the process of creating is conditioned by the size of painting.


Recently, I have been creating small paintings on the old book covers, with wax and pigments. On this exhibition these paintings are in emptiness. I started these paintings in the year 2013 and some of them were successfully finished in summer 2018, with the same approach regarding the content and the process.


One segment of the installation Salve Regina is also a video Salve Regina. I filmed the video one beautiful autumn day in the main square of Palmanova, with white sand and white sky... And while I was looking for a carousel I didn’t find it. And then, by the way, I stopped and recorded the video. Again coincidence, when you look for and want something, things do not come. However, without searching for there is no coincidence, either.


I am a painter, classical painter and in the very beginning I recognized that nowadays, common canvas carrier on wood frame is not for me. So more than twenty years ago I started looking for the right painting carrier which would remind of something old, which would be associated with something old. My wish was to trigger associations with the core and the archaic.


At the moment of sewing canvas, I am 40.000 years ago, creating a shelter protecting me from cold and wild animals, while today I am sewing the shelter from the banality of everyday. And before I start, such a carrier takes me somewhere else, opening the further path.


Once again, verbal and visual never correspond, it is important what and how something is done. The answer to “What is visible?”. It is truth that a figure appears on the paintings and it is being transformed. The form in which it is at the moment is a result of one kick. Years ago, I was angry and furious after hearing that my figures are schematic. At the end, I recognised that this anger was coming out from my inner, deeper knowledge, that my figure in that phase wasn’t the best one. However, I have persistently worked on figures. I have to point out again that material makes figures better than me. They are made by material and coincidence.


Natalija Šeruga Golob, February 2019

 

 

 

 

Interviews and talks with artist Natalija Šeruga Golob. The artist (painter) talks about her love with decay and modification of things. For her art is a matter of the spirit, and its mission is to approach the meaning of life. The painter is faithful to her recognisable style: painted canvas, visibly stitched on a metal sub frame, and to topics such as time, passing, and decay.


Natalija Šeruga Golob in her studio, 2016
(photo: Maja Škerbot)

 

 

 

 

CRÉDO* (slo)


* I wrote thise crédo for the purpoe of my last exhibition (Salve Regina, 2018), but next day I feel quite differently ...


I'm a painter. In recent years, I have been developing a painting model that conforms to the basic structure of the world, in which transformation is a constant, and the end is the precondition for a restart. My painting model is based on both the ancient and the eternal in visual creation. For me, painting is a ritual, a bridge between the real and the transcendental. A ritual as standardised, reproducible behaviour that connects me with the concept of the transcendental. If I assume the division of the real and the imaginary world into two poles—the sacred and the profane (as two absolutely different realities)—the ritual of creation, for me, represents a bridge between these two worlds. Art is a matter of the spirit, and its mission is to approach the meaning of life. There is no mysticism, I wrote blasphemously in my painting diary long ago. Mystery is regarded as being bewildered with the supernatural, the irrational. Mysterious is what exists and remains incomprehensible throughout and in every case. (Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. / Whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one be silent. - Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein) Fundamental philosophical truths can only be touched, indicated to, and left to relinquish to a place in which they settle down and reveal themselves. Therefore I merely touch the mystical as a fundamental structure of the world and let it be revealed to me. The visual and the verbal languages never fully overlap. By dismembering the world into various meta-languages, we approximately define and get to know the world, and by doing so we approach the knowledge of the world and thus the knowledge of ourselves.


I stitch the canvases with visible seams on a metal subframe. Using this painting support, I wish to raise associations with the old, the primeval, and the archaic. Ever since I can remember, I have been focusing in my work on time, the passing of time and decay. I do not portray these as a motif, because they became part of my painting practice in recent years. I literally imbue the technology of painting with destruction. I cover my paintings with ‘ash’—a mixture of white (PW6) and black pigment (PBk7)—or with ‘soil’—earth pigments (α-FeOOH). I then remove the colour and leave it to the material to reveal or conceal parts of the painting. This step of destruction or disappearance of the image is usually carried out by time. In recent years, by applying my final painting intervention, I myself have been rearranging, shrinking, accelerating time, and concentrating it into the painting process. The passing of time, the transformation are not just answers to the question of ‘What is depicted?’ but also of ‘How it is depicted?’. In the paintings, I thus create the past within the present.


Natalija Šeruga Golob, 2018