Gregor Pratneker - Svetloba, veter in nebo / Light, wind and sky

KiBela / MMC KIBLA Maribor
5. 5. 2017–3. 6. 2017

"My paintings are landscapes that twist and turn and are tossed about and split apart. Sometimes they merge into sky or water, or disappear off the edge of a cliff. Flooding is a regular occurrence. I view the painting process as a portal to my inner world, a response to environmental and global events; it has evolved out of a deep fascination with the metaphor of landscape and the extensive possibilities of oil paint. By moving the paint over and around a surface, weather and geological processes become agents of change, acting on landforms that are repositories of memory and accumulated experience. I meander through a landscape versus describing it, and capture not a moment but a process – forms, elements and events, moving and changing over time."

– Gregor Pratneker

Gregor Pratneker is inspired by joys of nature through the human doctrine of compassion, affection, and respect. His motifs concentrate around postmodernistically depicted landscapes, which means simply that he embraces a classic artistic style and the legacy of modern European art, while at the same time, committed and uninhibited, he transcends the mere metaphoric restraints of the themes typically associated with landscape painting.

MORE ABOUT EXHIBITION

Gregor Pratneker (1973) began painting in the 1990's. He paints exclusively in the oil painting technique. In 2006, he graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Education in Maribor with his thesis titled "The painting vedutas of Maribor" (mentors Marjeta Ciglenečki, Anka Krašna). Between 2007 and 2012 he was a post-graduate student at the Academy of Fine arts and Design in Ljubljana, receiving his MA with the thesis "Abstracting and form deformations in my painting". His works have been shown in several solo exhibitions both home and abroad, as well as in numerous group exhibitions and art colonies.
In 2013 he received the May Salon Award and the Maribor Fine Artists' Society (DLUM) Prize. His painting Zimsko jutro (Winter Morning) was presented at the legendary Autumn Salon in Paris in 2014. In 2015, he participated at the Salon of French Art at the Grand Palais in Paris, and in 2017 at the group exhibition The Project Room at the Bruno Massa Gallery in New York. He lives and works in Maribor.

Gregor Pratneker, Joe’s Canoe, 2017
oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm (photo Branimir Ritonja)

KiBela / MMC KIBLA
Opening on Friday, 5 May 2017, at 7 p. m..
Showing until 3 June 2017.

Space for art KiBela / MMC KIBLA, Ul. kneza Koclja 9, Maribor
Open on weekdays between 9 a. m. and 10 p. m., Saturdays between 4 p. m. and 10 p. m.

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ACE KIBLA is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Maribor, and the Ministry of Labor, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.
Project RISK CHANGE (2016–2020) is co-funded by the Creative Europe Program
of the European Union.