Urša Rahne, Love Is a Mess and So Am I: The Starting Points Project
The Starting Points project is a long-term exhibition project of Galerija Fotografija gallery, which presents two selected young artists every year and grants them the opportunity to exhibit in the gallery's bookstore and introduce them to the art market.
"Today is the last day I had a panic attack," vowed Urša Rahne, documenting this important moment and taking one of the self-portraits from her series Love Is a Mess and So Am I. The series of photographs comprises coincidental moments that the artist observes in her everyday environment and that reflect her momentary psychological state, accompanied by self-portraits taken at important or defining moments for the artist. She considers confusion and disorder to be a natural part of our everyday life and psychological state, and her associative photographs are her way of rebelling against society's current tendency towards constant self-improvement. It is this search for countless ways to make ourselves feel better (or at least to present ourselves as such on social media) that Rahne sees as problematic, as it is a denial of the chaotic and anxious moments that also form an important segment of our experiences. Her creative process is guided by spontaneity and ease, but also by a great deal of self-reflection and analytical understanding of her own feelings of well-being.
Urša Rahne does not stage her photographs, but instead observationally traces her own everyday environment. With a documentary approach, she records what is happening around her – from street scenes of litter, discarded objects and unusual compositions of the urban landscape to motifs taken in a circle of friends, often commenting on her relationship with her loved ones and her surroundings in a humorous way. Relationships are essentially also a jumble of feelings and emotionally volatile psychological states, says the artist – and there is nothing wrong with that. The beauty is in accepting the emotional mess as it is and trying to recognise in it a kind of order or natural state. She pursues the element of surprise in her work, i.e. she does not know what the final result will be when she takes the photograph. She potentiates this game with her customised frames full of found objects, toys and other trinkets. The objects are taken out of context and reminiscent of their original meaning, thus changing the message of the photographs. Both in terms of content and form, the project is therefore linked by the idea that sometimes messiness is perfectly acceptable, whether it concerns emotions or works of art.
– Hana Čeferin
The event is organised with the support of the Slovenian Book Agency.
