Bizzare, genius, creepy. Subversive, popular, surprising.

All of the above describes an artist unlike any other - Roger Ballen, the South African photographer of nightmarish aesthetics and dreamlike visions.

He has been a companion of our gallery since 2009, when he presented his work for the first time in Ljubljana at Galerija Fotografija with a world premiere of the series Boarding House and Retrospective 1982 – 2004 in Jakopič Gallery.

Now he is back in Jakopič Gallery with The World According to Roger Ballen, his biggest exhibition to date, first presented at the Halle Saint Pierre gallery in Paris last year.

Below is a walk through our favourite series by Roger Ballen - The Theatre of Apparitions, presented in our gallery in 2019.

Thus, The Theatre of Apparitions is some type of a visual manifestation of the voyage into the (collective) subconscious in 7 acts (Persona, Burlesque, Eros, Transmuted, Melancholy, Fragmentation, Eteral). Subconsciousness, which is inhabited by everything individual and collective, which we've seemingly tamed through societal concepts of taboos and prohibitions – the darkest urges, impulses and desires, filled with violence, sexuality, chaos and fear of destruction. The contrast between light and dark symbolises the entrance into darkness / emptiness from which apparitions emerge. The undefined in-between-space, inhabited by constantly changing hybrid beings (perhaps captured, imprisoned or lost), is dissolving the borders between outside and inside, the real and imaginary, animal and human. It represents a joining of opposites forming the same universe.

In the absurd shadow play of The Theatre of Apparitions, he feeds his imagination on the bottomless treasury of the collective unknown – mythology, archetypes, initiation ceremonies and rituals, visual art, (ancient) history and memory. We all, in some way, believe in some form of spirits. Apparitions are beings whose role is not clearly defined, they are neutral, not good or bad by default, only a trace, reminder or cry of something we may have forgotten, repressed or lost. They are what Sigmund Freud is describing in his concept of the uncanny (das Unheimlliche) and what inhibits other Ballen’s works – the terrifying which originates from the already known, the homelike; the unnerving element of the repressed rising to the surface. The plunge into nightmares and world of apparitions, however, does not bring a conclusion, epilogue, catharsis, solution or redemption even in the state of wakefulness. Even if it stems from the collective (subconscious), we each cope with an existential void in our own way.

from the exhibition text by Jasna Jernejšek

VIEW ROGER BALLEN IN OUR BOOKSHOP

EVENTS