Mirko Bratuša: A Feast for the Eyes

Mirko Bratuša: A Feast for the Eyes
3–30 October 2025
MMC KIBLA/KiBela

You are cordially invited to the opening of Mirko Bratuša’s solo exhibition A Feast for the Eyes, which will take place on Friday, 3 October 2025, at 7 p.m. at KiBela, space for art.

INVITATION (PDF)

Mirko Bratuša, one of Slovenia’s best-known and most prolific sculptors, has not only presented numerous exhibitions and installations but has also created a wide range of public sculptures and monuments. He approaches his work through diverse techniques and employs a broad spectrum of materials, from natural ones such as clay, wood and metal – especially bronze – to artificial materials like polyester as well as industrial products. His works are often animated with electricity, heating elements and water, enriched with sound or even interwoven with new technologies. The layering of materials, the multiplicity of motifs and themes and the simultaneous interplay of archaic and contemporary subjects give rise to allegorical, symbolic and fantastical images, in which detail is as significant as the whole.

In the hybrid iconography that fuses the anthropomorphic and the zoomorphic, new beings emerge – metaphorical and surreal – whose suspended and inquisitive presence may at first amuse us and even appear real. Yet a closer look at individual visual “implants” reveals something apocalyptic, fatalistic, ominous, cautionary and socially critical. Their subtle inner beauty can veil a foreboding sense of catastrophe, the intertwining of the symbolic archetype and the unconscious, the individual and the collective, the real and the unreal, i.e. created and yet modeled in the image of no one. These figures summon distant stories, stir wonder and awaken primal memory, only to hurl us into the stark realities of bioengineering, genetics and cloning on the one hand and the manipulation of society and nature on the other, leading to global crises, pandemics and wars.

Just as Mirko Bratuša enchants with the magic of his figures, he also disenchants with their presence, landing a direct blow to the paradox and banality of existence, not only as an existential idiom or predicament, but as an existentialist reflection that unfolds on the physical and material as well as on the metaphysical and mystical level. And immanently, profoundly mythical. His “creatures” are at once gentle and attentive yet rebellious and raw, sometimes proudly exhibiting their beauty on a pedestal regardless of their condition, sometimes twisted and constrained, undisturbed in their self-image of grandeur and in the role they are destined to play in an animated sequence of poses, positions and grimaces. This expressive and aesthetic journey from prehistory to the present becomes a point of identification for the self-reflection we experience here and now on an excursion into timelessness. Perplexed, we connect spaces and worlds filled with vehement presence and repressed anxiety, searching for hidden and enigmatic codes that might miraculously catapult us into a redemptive future.

Mirko Bratuša, who represented Slovenia at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 with the project Heaters for Hot Feelings, last had a solo exhibition in Maribor in 1997.

Biography

Mirko Bratuša (1963) received the Student Prešeren Award in 1988 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana the following year. From 1990 to 1992 he pursued postgraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Professor Leo Kornbrust, specializing in sculpture in urban space, and completed his degree there. In 1993 he joined the class of the renowned British sculptor Tony Cragg at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, after which he returned to the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana and completed a postgraduate program in sculpture that same year.

Since 1997, he has been teaching sculpture and ceramics at the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana, Department of Art Education, where he was appointed full professor in 2014. In 2005 he received the Golden Bird Award and the following year the Prešeren Fund Award for his exhibition Anonimos at the Circulo de Bellas Artes Gallery in Madrid. In 2011, he represented Slovenia at the 54th Venice Biennale with the project Heaters for Hot Feelings. He has been a full member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 2025.

Bratuša explores the issue of placing sculptures in natural and urban space, a theme he explored in his book Monuments of Transience, published in 2000. His concept of the counter-monument sparked a debate in Slovenian public space, most notably with the sculptures Monument NG in Nova Gorica and Nebuchadnezzar in front of the Ljubljana City Gallery. With his work, he attempts to challenge conventional notions of monuments and advocates the professional and systematic conservation and restoration of public sculptures.

He is convinced that sculpture is fundamentally about material and technique, which together constitute its content. For him, combinations of materials open up unexpected possibilities – not in the Rococo sense of layering red, black and white marble pebbles, but rather in the sense of layering words: sharp, soft, delicate, robust … Because his work is devoted to untangling the relationships between form, material and technique, a basic understanding of technological genesis – the creative process – is essential for engaging with and interpreting his sculptural work.

http://www.mirkobratusa.si/

< Mirko Bratuša: There are several Drago, wood and bronze, 88 x 91 x 32 cm, 2024 (detail); photo: Jaka Babnik

MMC KIBLA/KiBela, Ulica kneza Koclja 9, Maribor
Opening hours: Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.