Painting by Gustav Gnamuš holds visual perception as the privileged place in the complex of human perceptual apparatus. To Frank Stella's "You see what you see", Gnamuš asked "What exactly do you see?" and pointed at fluidity of impressions in perceptual apparatus and at conditions of perception that influence visual sensation, possessing capacity to change even known into unknown.
A Gnamuš painting requires a kind of intellectual neutrality, a state of dissolved, decentred consciousness in contact with the world without hierarchies, the state of mind required in Zen Buddhism meditation. Its purpose is self-realization through an immediate experience. In this way the process of seeing is established anew as an exclusive personal adventure. Gnamuš often titles his paintings by the indifferent "Untitled" that can be taken as the denial of referential points to the viewer in order to neutralize the process of perception. No matter how Gnamuš titles his paintings, either hermetically "untitled" or as allegorical cues, the titles serve as markers of their individuality, allow for their identification and here their function is exhausted.
Gnamuš's paintings are a result of extraordinary discipline, organization, perseverance and uncompromising quest for truth and at the same time also of a tremendous technical expertise and creative imagination.
Andrej Smrekar, PhD
Excerpt from the exhibition's accompanying text
Gustav Gnamuš
Gustav Gnamuš was born in Mežica, Slovenia, on November 18, 1941. Between 1961 and 1966 he studied the art of panting at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design. His professors were Maksim Sedej, France Mihelič, and Gabrijel Stupica. He graduated in 1966.
From 1972 to 1978 he worked as a free-lance artist. In 1978 he started teaching at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design. Between 1983 and 1985 he was chairman of the Department of Art. In 1985 he became associate professor and in 1990 full professor of drawing and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. In 2013 he was nominated Professor Emeritus at the University of Ljubljana.
Gustav Gnamuš lives and works in Ljubljana.