overview solo exhibition, 2011 –

“Do hairs, dirt, excrement, all these ‘vile and worthless’ things, have an idea of their own? What to do with all these unseemly and rejected things – with all this waste? How could we possibly treat them equally? This is Socrates’s abyss, a refuse pit in fact, from which he diverts his gaze and which he would prefer to leave alone exactly where it is. But this is impossible, Parmenides reminds him. In some sense, wisdom begins precisely with waste; Socrates will have matured philosophically once he is able to reflect upon waste”, is part of Dr Omladič’s contribution to the catalogue.

The exhibition Supertrash features the projects Picnic on a Dump (Piknik na deponiji), Beggar (Žicar), Urban – Woodenware Vending Machine (Urban – Avtomat za suho robo), Space Junk Spotting (Vesoljske smeti), The Ex, No Lego, Just Do It!, AcDcWc, The Big Switch Off (Veliki izklop), iSmoke2 and others, all of which demonstrate Sašo Sedlaček’s ability to reflect upon waste. Moreover, regardless of whether he is dealing with recycling faeces or analogue televisual waves, waste remains the key topic of Sedlaček’s oeuvre.

“It is very clear where the interest of Sašo Sedlaček’s art works lies. Recycling. (Re)use of the rejected. The improvement of the world and a warning that people in the West are not the only inhabitants of this planet. His projects shift between local and global problems of waste. The artist is interested in topical themes that fall into the category of the age-old efforts to improve human life. Fortunately, he does not tackle these issues in a naive, bigoted or moralistic manner, but rather with humour and incentive. His ideas are witty, creative and, above all, useful. I wonder why Ribnica has not yet started producing the Urban – woodenware vending machine. We should not be surprised at all if, in a few years, while strolling around BTC City – Ljubljana may well be just one of its districts by then – we happen upon a pricey lavatory that produces its own lighting, which is something that Sedlaček has already shown us with his AcDcWc lavatories”, as Dr Petja Grafenauer notes about the exhibition.

Petja Grafenauer

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art
Cooproduction: Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec, MGLM, Museum and Galleries of the City of Ljubljana