Ištvan Išt Huzjan

Works

Ištvan Išt Huzjan

“On one hand, my work results in atmospheric, temporary site-specific installations, and on the other, by dealing with the format of a book, I create more permanent objects. 

My essential themes are appropriation of my own childhood and the transitional time of the recent European history. In my practice I have moved from representation to re-enactment, which means moving away from creating an illusion on two-dimensional surface towards combining different media. I combine disappearance of the image, working with actors, music, burning and other means of temporality to re-enact situations like transition, growing up, separation from the loved ones and fading of memory. 

As a young artist moving across Europe in the search of possibilities to create, I understand my studies as a research in public fetishes and archetypes, a research in our desires and incapability. The question I confront myself within my work is: Under what circumstances have our paths collided and where are my traces leading me?”

CV

Born in 1981, Ljubljana. Lives and works between Ljubljana (SI) and Brussels (BE)

STUDIES

2005  

Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Venice (IT)

AWARDS

2019 

In Sesto Prize/Palinsesti 2019, nominee, San Vito al Tagliamento (IT) 

Opening Award, ARCOmadrid (with Gaep), Madrid (ES)

2015

Grand Prix, 31. Biennial of Graphic Arts – ‘Over you / you’, MGLC, Ljubljana (SI)

2014

Fernand Baudin prijs, Brussels (BE)

OHO Award 2014, nominee, Ljubljana (SI)

2011

Henkel Art Award 2011, nominee, Vienna (AT)

OHO Award 2011, nominee, Ljubljana (SI)

Since 2012, Ištvan Išt Huzjan is running an exhibition space in Brussels called Coffre Fort together with Gregoire Motte and Thibaut Espiau.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Recent solo shows

2021

‘From Top to Bottom’, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb – Richter Collection, Zagreb (HR)

2020

‘Resilience Test: Ištvan Išt Huzjan’, online exhibition, Gaep, gaepgallery.com

2019

‘Fontana Huzjan Delvaux Derycke’, Apoteka, Vodnjan (HR)

‘Debris’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

2018

‘Naplavine’, Mestna Galerija Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica (SI) 

‘Hušman Huzjan Tadić’ (with Ana Hušman & Marko Tadić), SC Zagreb / Francuski paviljon, Zagreb (HR)

‘Night Swimmers’ (with Katarína Poliadiková), Kunstraum haaaauch-quer, Klagenfurt (AT) 

‘de Métrico a Imperial’, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (MX)

2017

‘MERE’, City Art Gallery of Ljubljana (SI)

2016

‘Nuclei’, Reaktor Podgorica IJS, Ljubljana (SI)

‘Subterranean Walks’, Gaep (formerly EASTWARDS PROSPECTUS), Bucharest (RO)

2014

‘OD TU DO TU performance’, Blum & Poe Gallery, Los Angeles (USA)

‘OD TU DO TU performance’, MoMA PS1, New York (USA)

‘OD TU DO TU performance’, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (CH)

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Recent group shows

2021

‘The Domino Effect 2’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Bodies of Desire’, Montoro12 Gallery, Brussels (BE)

‘Bigger than Myself. Heroic Voices from Ex-Yugoslavia’, Museo MAXXI, Rome (IT)

2020

‘The Domino Effect’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

2019

9th Triennial of Contemporary Art U3: Dead and Alive, MG+MSUM, Ljubljana (SI)

‘Happening: 20 years S.M.A.K’, S.M.A.K, Gent (BE)

2018

‘A Performance Affair – Panopticon Edition’, Brussels (BE)

‘All That We Have in Common’, Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, Skopje (MK)

2017

‘La Norme Idéale’, Levy.Delval Gallery, Brussels (BE)

‘Loin Avec Moi’, LMAK Gallery, New York (USA)

‘Seeing Ourselves Sensing’, Gaep (formerly EASTWARDS PROSPECTUS), Bucharest (RO)

‘NSK State Art: The Impossible Return’, James Gallery – CUNY Graduate Center, New York (USA)

2015

‘2005 – 2015’, MG+MSUM, Ljubljana (SI)

‘ACAW Field Meeting – Take 3: Thinking Performance’, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (USA)

‘A New Spirit in Booking’, MER Station 17, Cultuurcentrum Strombeek (BE)

2013

‘U3’, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (SI)

‘Transnational Pavilion’, 55th International Exhibition of Art, Venice Biennale (IT)

Press

"In Wanderlust, a precious ode to walking, writer Rebecca Solnit dwells on 'walking artists' and says something about Richard Long that also applies to Huzjan’s art: 'His brief texts and uninhabited images leave most of the journey up to the viewer’s imagination, and this is one of the things that distinguishes such contemporary art, that it asks the viewer to do a great deal of work, to interpret the ambiguous, imagine the unseen.' Like Richard Long in the 1960s, Huzjan comes up with performances that he documents not necessarily in an exhaustive manner, and which are traversed by a tension between the material and the immaterial. He later exhibits photographs that mark his approach, and also found objects, little sculptures he makes in the studio, and artist’s books, a sort of travelogues."

Exhibitions

Viewing Rooms