Lea Jazbec: Physicality and the Essence of Space

Lea Jazbec’s art exhibition "Physicality and the Essence of Space" 
The Museum of Salt-making at the Sečovlje Saltpans in Fontanigge: 9th May 2024 -1st September 2024 

The interdisciplinary artist explores nature and humanity by experimenting with various forms of media and light.
The exhibition project entitled "Physicality and the Essence of Space" features two series of portraits concerning man and landscape, along with experimental photography using a camera obscura. These works were created between 2022 and 2023 in Slovenian Istria (specifically Sečovlje and Kubed) and are currently on display at the Museum of Saltworks in Fontanigge.
 

The project In Situ (2022–2024) has a strong relationship with nature or the surface of the space and testifies to our activities: it is a proof of our activities – the movements and traces made by us – or the diverse consequences of our actions. The authoress transfers digital and analogue photographs manually onto varied materials, e.g. paper, existing textures, and materials found on the site, and links the images with the place of creation-origin. In a series of portraits of saltpan workers created in the Sečovlje Saltpans at Lera in 2022, Lea Jazbec explores, via the fragile soil of the Sečovlje landscape, the relationship between the full and the empty within the unstable balance emerging when meeting up with the earth, salt and cracks in the pans. The utilization of frottage enables her to document the traces of time "written" in saltpools and demonstrates a strong interest in the unique properties of soil and existing matter, its physicality and essence. The traces visible in the portraits are traces of the space, the relief created and/or conditioned by the saltpan activities and natural capacities. While residing in the house of Alojz Kocjančič in 2023 in Kubed, Lea Jazbec continues, through a hand-printed graphic print of a photograph on the Repen Povir stone, with exploration of landscape and the Šavrin locals, whose origin/way of life she associates with the hard karst stone.

The photographic part of the exhibition with the camera obscura is based on our perception and the way we see things in the world, which reflects human condition. The light and movement she captures by the transformed opening of the classic aperture of the camera obscura into a line invites us to look at the world in a different way. The Project Reconstruction of the Projected Image encompasses photography, video and installation (2018-2024).

photos by Lea Jazbec