October 8, 2008 - November 1, 2008

Gregor Kregar

Immersive Echoes

“My work is not confined to any single medium or material. I am concerned with relationships between art and everyday life, I often explore the ways familiar subjects can be represented in a way that displaces original meaning and transforms them from their invisible and mundane existence into the realm of the ridiculously spectacular. My work deals with issues of ambiguity and the uncanny yet it is strongly connected to the social, economical and political environment I live in”.

Immersive Echoes is an exhibition that combines complex geometric structures made from triangulated mirrored stainless steel together with photographs and videos of clouds to create an environment of fragmented reflection and overlapping skies. For Kregar, Sculpture is not just something to observe, he often combines scale, materials and imagery to remind us of our presence and existence ‘much of my sculpture, including this work, is meant to trigger ideas and get people thinking and talking about how we use space – to think about why and how we build”.

The work explores the possibility of moving cities from the earth’s surface into the air and this is a central focus of the exhibition that encompasses futuristic sculptural constructions, video projection and relating 3d rendered photographic works. The project serves as a kind of urban model for a floating metropolis that might pose as a practical solution for lack of housing and overpopulation of cities around the world. In depicting these flying communities the project draws attention to the narrowness of traditional land-bound perspectives and proposes a sustainable occupation of the sky and, in Buckminster Fuller’s words a, 'great and anticipatory vision of the future’.

This sculptural installation also expands on a long history of avant-garde utopian architecture like the projects of constructivist artists and architects like Vladimir Tatlin’s visionary proposal for the Monument of the Third International, Konstantin Melnikov’s Cylinder House and Georgy Krutikov’s Flying City. Their ideas had a strong impact on the development of contemporary Architecture. Kregars work makes reference to these historical and contemporary concepts and strategies creating a space that interferes with the white cube of the gallery and blur the boundary between viewer and object.

Gregor Kregar

Born in Slovenia in 1972 he received his BFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2000. He has exhibited widely in New Zealand, Australia, America and Europe. Solo shows include: Roke 2, 2000, Auckland City Art Gallery, I Appear and Disappear, 2003-2004, Dunedin Public Art gallery, Dunedin; Te Tuhi Art Gallery, Auckland. Group show include: Telecom Prospect 2007-New Zealand Art Now, Wellington City Gallery, 2007, A&P Show, Christchurch Art Gallery, Crystal Chain Gang, 2001, Auckland City Art gallery, Auckland.

Gregor’s work has been recognized by winning the prestigious Wallace Art Award in 2000 and a Norsewear Art Award in 2004. He has completed many public commissions and his work is included in a number of important Art collections such as; Te Papa Tongarewa-Museum of New Zealand, Wellington, James Wallace Arts Trust, Auckland, Connells Bay Sculpture Park, Waiheke and Francis J Greenburger Collection, New York. Gregor has been invited to participate on several New Zealand and international art residency programmes, includiong Art Omi, New York, NY, USA in 2007, McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, NC, USA in 2006 and The South Project Residency, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in 2005. He has recently had a very successful solo exhibition for the 2008 Melbourne Art Fair.