Born in 1978 into a stonemason’s family, Tomaž Furlan was in contact with craftwork and working with materials from his earliest days. His education as a stonemason, builder and restorer turned out to be only a prelude to his research and experiments in the field of sculpture and the materialization of conceptual narratives. After graduating in sculpture from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts in 2005, Furlan started his artistic career with a serial work entitled Wear. This was a series of video performances, developed from absurd machines created by the artist and used in ridiculous situations. As the Wear series developed so did the methodology of creating machines from waste materials and slowly transforming video performative works into interactive “playgrounds.” The Wear series was presented at many exhibitions, such as Limited Access II, Parkingallery in collaboration with Azad Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2009); Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium (2012); Port Izmir 3: It’s enough, Izmir, Turkey (2014); Technical Unconscious, Porto, Portugal (2014); the Museum of Contemporary Art Rochechouart, France (2015); Autour du Nouveau Réalisme (Celebrating New Realism), Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse, France (2017); Under the Surface, Arco Madrid (2021); I Made This, Galerija Božidar Jakac (2021); Forma Viva Kostanjevica na Krki (2023); and many others.

Furlan’s materialization of socially responsive concepts continued in numerous works that followed the Wear series. The development of narratives in these projects always explores issues related to the working class, the exploitation of human resources, and various satirical and humorous situations faced by the individual. The artist explores relational aesthetics by confronting viewers with a nonspecific, common activity in a specific situation. His recent artworks have become more structurally complex and large-scale projects involving the use of concrete and wood materials, and include both public sculptures and interactive exhibitions.

Tomaž Furlan has received numerous awards for his work, such as the OHO award for young artists (2012) and a Rihard Jakopič recognition (2017), among others. His works are now part of museum collections both in Slovenia and abroad.

https://tomazfurlan.art/

WORK AT THE EXHIBITION

Shell, 1970–1973 / 2017–2019
public sculpture, wood, concrete, 600 × 250 × 200 cm

The sculpture Shell was made at the symposium Forma Viva Kostanjevica na Krki as part of an annual intervention in public space. It is permanently installed in the main sculpture garden in front of the museum complex. The form is made of a gigantic wooden log, cut in half and hollowed. The substance of the center of the log is replaced by concrete. Only the shell around the concrete center is left from a once mighty oak tree. Over time, the wooden shell will degrade so only the concrete imprint of the tree will remain standing as a post-anthropogenic memory.

The aesthetics of a simple wooden log is enough to create an impressive public sculpture, but the basic issue raised by Shell is the awareness of its structural specifics. The intention was to create an opportunity to approach and contemplate the structural insides of an impressive tree – or what is left of it. In my cynical way, I wanted to highlight the perception of the transformation from natural to ‘adjusted natural,’ or from given to made.

The artwork is permanently installed in the front garden of the Božidar Jakac Gallery in Kostanjevica na Krki. It is made of two elements that are approximately six meters tall. The materials used are wood and reinforced concrete.