ceramic installation, land art, the park of Kromberk museum, Goriški museum, Nova Gorica, Slovenia
Ivana Petan
WALKING ON THE GRASS
In the Goriški muzej we want to welcome the summer with an artistic installation by the ceramist Ivana Petan from Ljubljana who "planted" snow white clay flowers in the park of Kromberk Castle.
The invitation to the visitors to walk on the grass is perceptible from the title, to walk among the trees of the park, where gentle flowers draw various white forms on the dark earth. The artist who often intervenes in the space with delicate works, but of intense reflection and spirituality, takes here in consideration the opposites that build the one, the totality of being. Light, soft, white flowers create a strong contrast with the dark and heavy earth and at the same time their clear shapes project dark shadows on the ground below. As we are taught by Eastern spirituality, everything carries its opposite. Only when we observe ourselves and the world around us from different points of view we will be able to learn and feel the whole. Only in this way we can grow spiritually and open our minds to accept the different. And it is precisely the different that gives meaning to life.
The walk through the installation of Ivana Petan is an invitation to meditation and introspection which is actually a natural process in a man when he walks. Moving through space is always also moving through time – past, present and future, within and outside oneself. Walking allows a person to move and, at the same time, to stop, it is effort and relief, it is the means and the goal.
The white spirals of clay flowers invite us to the park, they call attention to the surrounding nature and at the same time are reminiscent of water and air currents. They are the result of manual work and human creativity which, however, derives from nature and returns to it. They are the product of an artist, an individual who takes us / brings us back to the collective.
Ivana Petan creates her own reality with her work. She states that it is not given but it is chosen – chosen through her own thought, convictions and doing. In the park she created a new reality and donated it to the community. Her thought thus leads the step of the man who walks through this work and alters his life for a brief moment. But perhaps this moment will last much longer, perhaps it will leave a permanent trace in the memory of the man who will continue to return to it when it has long been over. Namely the installation will once disappear. It is in fact ceded to nature and to man. Time will reveal what will become of it.
Katarina Brešan
