In mijn post over Röntgen kwam ik de kunstenaar Stane Jagodic tegen. Ik had nog niet al zijn werk bekeken, maar ik kwam er achter dat ik zijn fotografie erg interessant vond.
Biografie
Stane Jagodič (Jagodich) was born on June 15, 1943 in Celje (Slovenia) as the illegitimate child of mother Julijana Jagodič and Franjo Kunšek, a photographer from Celje. He spent his youth in many parts of Šmarje pri Jelšah (Šentvid, Predenca, Brecljevo). In 1964 he graduated from the School of Design, then worked as a teacher at the elementary school at Lesično, Kozjansko, and in 1970 graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. He is a freelance artist engaged in painting, graphics, spraygram, x-ray art, caricature, photomontage, collage, assemblage and performance. He is also a writer, columnist and editor.
In the early 1970s he found himself interested not only in the exterior image of the human figure but also in the internal anatomical structure – first in skeleton with skull (anatome secare). In 1972 he started working with x-ray montages, which he called X-Ray Art. Later, he started to penetrate the insides of machines, computer components, and the agitated structure of diverse genres and mechanisms. To this technical combination he gave the name digital constructivism (1983).
He was a member of the Slovenian Fine Artists Society, the Slovenian Designers Society; Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate New York; Board of Advisors of the American Biographical Institute, Raleigh (USA), and a contributor for the international magazine Graphic Journal, Seoul (South Korea), Stock of Humour (Rogaška Slatina); and today, a contributor for the magazine Diogen (Sarajevo) and the monthly City Magazine, Ljubljana (15 years). He was the initiator and head of the group of artists Grupa Junij (June Group), an international fine art movement, active in the years 1970–1985; the initiator of the International Art Collection Junij and the Slovene Triennial of Satire and Humour Aritas-satirA (1995–2004); and curator of the collection of Slavko Ciglenečki, the ‘photo chronicler of Šmarsko’, and a member of many fine arts juries at home and abroad. He has had more than 50 solo exhibitions and has taken part in more than 200 group exhibitions. He has received 47 awards for various genres and techniques in his creative work. He has also received 9 awards for his collaboration on various cultural projects.
A monograph was published in 1989 on his multimedia art (1959–1989), and in 2006, his 800-page collection of memories entitled Orbis Artis – Restless and Creative (1943- 2004) was published. His works have been published in numerous newspapers, magazines, catalogues and anthologies worldwide. He is married to Greta Hrovat, a landscape designer, and has two sons, Jan (a designer) and Vid (a software engineer).
The life path of Stane Jagodič, multimedia artist, versatile researcher and cosmopolite, was not an easy one. Since early childhood (and still today) he has been fighting an ongoing Don Quixote battle with heartless, insensitive windmills. Often he has found himself a lone rider, but marked for life by humanism, idealism and optimism.
He was a member of the Slovenian Fine Artists Society, the Slovenian Designers Society; Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate New York; Board of Advisors of the American Biographical Institute, Raleigh (USA), and a contributor for the international magazine Graphic Journal, Seoul (South Korea), Stock of Humour (Rogaška Slatina); and today, a contributor for the magazine Diogen (Sarajevo) and the monthly City Magazine, Ljubljana (15 years). He was the initiator and head of the group of artists Grupa Junij (June Group), an international fine art movement, active in the years 1970–1985; the initiator of the International Art Collection Junij and the Slovene Triennial of Satire and Humour Aritas-satirA (1995–2004); and curator of the collection of Slavko Ciglenečki, the ‘photo chronicler of Šmarsko’, and a member of many fine arts juries at home and abroad. He has had more than 50 solo exhibitions and has taken part in more than 200 group exhibitions. He has received 47 awards for various genres and techniques in his creative work. He has also received 9 awards for his collaboration on various cultural projects.
A monograph was published in 1989 on his multimedia art (1959–1989), and in 2006, his 800-page collection of memories entitled Orbis Artis – Restless and Creative (1943- 2004) was published. His works have been published in numerous newspapers, magazines, catalogues and anthologies worldwide. He is married to Greta Hrovat, a landscape designer, and has two sons, Jan (a designer) and Vid (a software engineer).
The life path of Stane Jagodič, multimedia artist, versatile researcher and cosmopolite, was not an easy one. Since early childhood (and still today) he has been fighting an ongoing Don Quixote battle with heartless, insensitive windmills. Often he has found himself a lone rider, but marked for life by humanism, idealism and optimism.
Jagodič as visual artist
Stane Jagodič became acquainted with the Slovene classical and modern fine arts as far back as in primary school, mainly through printed media. In 1959 he made his own album of collages entitled 'Slovene Artists'. It was then that he created his first abstract compositions. At the School of Design in Ljubljana (1961–1964) he was influenced by the Slovene 'Vesna club', but in his spare time he was creating both realistic and naturalistic drawings representing the scenery of the countryside, expressing his nostalgic feelings for his homeland (abandoned farmhouses). At school he got to know the achievements of the modern world, in drawing, painting, sculpture and design. In 1964 he created some compositions influenced by constructivism, op art and informel. During his teaching year at Kozjansko (1965) he published his first caricatures treating social themes. This kind of expression, which he later gave the name 'satirical drawing', strongly marked, with its spiritual and creative dimension, his later multimedia performances filled with symbolic, metaphysical and science fiction messages. Following his time at the Academy of Fine Arts he fell under the influence of abstract expressionism.
He painted abstract oil and acrylic paintings, as well as colour inks (poured on and blown). He named this last technique rose-shaped, square and checked tachism. At the same time, he expressed himself intensely through caricatures, satirical drawings, photomontage, object-montage, assemblage, performance etc.
By the same token he did have some initial role models, like the pioneers of modern fine art: Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and de Chirico, to whom he also dedicated the international exhibitions of the Junij Group (Grupa Junij). His other role models included avant-garde artists like John Heartfield, Rene Magritte, Paul Klee and Vladimir Tatlin. His modern creations were equally influenced by classical religious art, like his early motif Crucifix, a lithograph from 1969. Later, this religious influence was also felt in his compositions, like the use of strict symmetry, diptych, triptych and sequences, like the succession of images in the Passion. The mysterious archaic religious relics, built into boxes and covered by glass, are the precursors of his object montages, also mounted into various boxes. At the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s he was largely occupied with kinetic objects; the artist's childhood years spent in the countryside should be mentioned, years strongly marked by simple village scenes with picturesque light&shadow tricks.
Later, when he began to develop his own sense of artistic poetics he often transcended some lesser artists from both the East and the West in terms of their ideas and techniques.
Important cycles in visual arts; directions & ideas
Jagodič launched into a new spirit and technique in a big way in the early 1970s, as illustrated by his cycles: Tinned Laughter, Captured Dimension, Mirror of the Absurd, Symbol of Existence, Injured Organism, Zoo Poetics, Eco End, Magic Panorama, Panta Rhei, Power of Energy, Worshipper of Light, Poetry of Light and X-Ray Art. In the second half of the 1970s and later, other cycles followed: Silver Horizon, Steel Horizon, Magic Core, Mirror Design, Mail Art Satire, Metamorphosis Veneris, Horizon of Rust, Satirical Homage to 1985, Graphisms of Plasters, Anatome-Secare, Art Paradox, Good morning, Mr Orwell!, Tehnicos Poeticus, Zoo Poetics...
His ideas were based on a philosophical and humanistic knowledge of the world and influenced by socio-political circumstances at home and abroad. In caricature and other media he consistently focussed on ecological, socio-political and anti-militaristic themes with satire and humour. As a humanist he has always been sensitive to human relationships. His creativity then is a response to numerous impulses and expressions of our technically absurd and consumerist-driven world. His socio-political images are often grotesque, but not nihilistic. With his committed expressions he warns and urges civilisation toward self-reflection and awareness, so as to avoid converting our fabulous technical progress into an apocalyptic boomerang. On the one hand, he admires certain visual aspects and the complicated functioning of machines as the result of historic collective thinking; but on the other hand he is afraid of the careless control exercised over dangerous devices that have the potential to wreak both individual and mass destruction. He is also opposed to all the fear-mongering perpetrated by militants who are visibly losing any sense of ethical and moral values, values that have been constructed and enriched over thousands of years.
When he was illustrating the primary school textbook The Evolution Theory back in 1969, he carefully studied fauna, including prehistoric animals. In his satirically humorous motifs he has continued to use the animal world to stir eco-awareness, as well as humorous fables to criticise Homo sapiens. All these motifs are presented in the forms of caricature, photomontage and three-dimensional objects.
His early huge-format photomontage, which comprises a picturesque duplicating of butterflies, entitled The Funeral of a Butterfly (1971) is of particular interest. In his retrospective exhibition on the theme of Zoo Poetics, held in the Jakopič Gallery in Ljubljana in 2008, he presented hundreds of animal motifs in various techniques, depicting the global ecological crisis and symbolising the grotesque side of man – the man who plays the role of a fearful rabbit or a blood-thirsty lion. He also employed motifs like primitive dinosaurs, which take possession of technologically complicated machinery and digital techniques created by Homo sapiens (scientific fantasy).
New Technical Procedures
Caught Dimension / Digital Constructivism
Since 1964 Jagodič has focussed passionately on various linear structures like nets, cages and modelling constructions in combination with mirrors. He called this technique 'cyber or digital-constructivism’, which influenced his satirical drawings and caricature (1974–1975), and foretold the proliferation of computers and the computer age. A steel cage, a net enveloping some trapped organic bodies, the use of various lights and reflective lighting effects and picturesque shadows are for Jagodič the primary source-elements of his creativity. The linearly agitated form of the cage means captivity, a certain anguish, but also the fixing of a human being in infinite space. Two clocks with a mirror instead of a dial are caught in a two-tower cage (Caught Dimension, 1971) and throw the viewer into a timeless dimension. Jagodič also captured a stone, a candle, a lightbulb, a reflector, a metronome, a vacuum cleaner, a fish, a chicken egg, a prehistoric animal, a cast of human legs, a plastic baby, Mona Lisa and a nude woman into his cages or nets. With all of these motifs he expressed more or less comprehensible symbols. In this play of visual combinations and processes he often comes to a paradox that is particularly expressed in the motif of Captured Trap (1969), where he has filled the first half of the entrance to the cage with synthetic resin in the form of a box. In this way he has prevented, in a symbolic and poetic sense, the action of catching and killing an animal, and at the same time, performed an unusual aesthetic operation.
Tin / Cage / Paraffin / Spraygram
In the early 1970s Jagodič also produced a number of motifs using tin cans, with the cycle (Tinned Laughter, 1972) exhibited in the Town Gallery in Ljubljana. At the same time he presented a work entitled Captured Organism, 1972 where the body of a ravaged white mouse is sunk into paraffin. He made a similar combination with an exhibit representing the evolution of a fish, from egg to adult whole, sunk in paraffin, and after that, also captured in a steel cage (Captured Embryo 1972).
In 1977 he made a series of pictures using colour sprays in the form of a photogram, and called them 'spraygrams'. With silver, gold and copper spray paint he gave metallic surfaces to stones, wooden and plastic objects, which mimicked, in their approach, a sculptor’s casts. In 1983 he put together the exhibition Silver Horizon.
X-Ray Art, Anatome Secare / Multiplications of the object and figure
At the outset of the 1970s, Jagodič was already penetrating the inner parts of the human body using drawing-caricature. For the magazine 'Problemi' he drew a series of brains that featured a kind of paradoxical symbolism (1970). He wanted to underline the fact that he had systematically begun to penetrate the human anatomy. He produced photomontages using medical x-ray films and called them 'x-ray art' (1972). He was not interested in the inside of the human body, to better represent through advanced anatomy, the outside of a human or animal figure, in the sense of the Renaissance-era studies of Leonardo da Vinci. He wanted to make visitors to his exhibitions aware of the fact that there exists another type of beauty, that of the visual interior of a living being. His x-ray pictures in their tender transparency and blue colours greatly contributed to this particular theory of beauty. In his 3-dimensional works of art, using anatomy, he used real, natural human or animal skeletons as well as plastic casts (anatome-secare), and an aluminium cast of male legs.
Gradually, he began to penetrate into the core of mechanical devices by means of drawings, photos and 3-dimensional procedures. He simply dismantled and took apart waste computers, photocopiers and other machines with mysterious entrails. He studied their picturesque cores, admiring their impressive functions and linearly dynamic structures. The motifs described in this chapter were shown in retrospect in 1999 at the exhibition Tehnicos Poeticos, in the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana. It is also characteristic of Jagodič's creative process to take an object or figure and duplicate it, thus creating a raster of repeated singular or multi-line elements. This approach to composition creates a picturesque rhythm similar to both organic structures found in nature and to inorganic structures found in the urban environment. Already at the outset of the 1970s the artist was anticipating, through his manually created satirical drawings, the computer-driven duplication and multiplication of the future.
Permanent and temporary technical collaborators in the creation of art works:
During the making of photographs Jagodič was most often greatly assisted by (previously mentioned) photographers Marijan Pal, Matija Pavlovec and Oskar Dolenc.
Other photographers include, Tihomir Pinter, Joco Žnidaršič, Milan Orožen Adamič, Tone Stojko, Slavko Ciglenečki, Franc Štrukelj etc.
With film directors Iztok Tory, Ludvik Burnik, Milan Lebar, Stojan Femec, Andrej Heferle etc.
In some photomontages Jagodič has used journalistic and advertisement photographs published by: Der Spiegel, Stern, Quick, Bunte, Burda (Germany); Epoca, L'Europeo, Gente (Italy); Life, Newsweek, Time, Playboy (USA); Match, Photo, Lui (France) etc. Some landscape photographs have been taken from varius calendars, monographs of cities and countries. Jagodič has also used reproductions from the book Encyclopedia Anatomica, Museo La specola Florence (Taschen, 1999)
Co-operation with the silkscreen printers: Silvester Apollonio, Janez Matelič and Geodetski zavod Slovenije.
Collaborators on the construction of objects made of wood, metal, glass, mirror, plaster, plastic and print: Samo Zorec, Željko Ulčnik, Matej Kosmač, Mirsad Begić, Jože Fajs, Jože Puntar, Ivan Debelak, Stane Šramel and firms: Firm Ulčnik, Inštitut Jožef Stefan, Mineral, Copy Center (Ljubljana), Gorenje (Velenje), Steklarna Rogaška Slatina (Rogaška Slatina), Andotehna (Ribnica), Bullyland (Spraitbach), Unica Toy (Postojna), Schleich GmbH (Schwabisch Gmund) etc.
Performance
Metaphysical Presence, Surrealism and the Tendency toward Science Fiction
Jagodič’s expressions outside the arena of engagement include poetic ideas, surrealist and metaphysical visions, and motifs ranging from micro to macrocosm – way back in 1959 he painted a work entitled The Universe. From the very beginning he has been including photos from space into photomontages or created them using underground structures.
Jagodič is enchanted by the rich imaginary world of science fiction, with its unusual combination of elements, which led him to create various actions and performances in which he acted himself and occasionally with extras, especially avant-garde female dancers that focussed on figure-movement-sound. These dancers were largely hidden behind white or red screens, behind nets with lights and props and illuminated by various kinetic sources. During the performance of Steel Horizon (1983) the dancers behind the red screen and net were joined by three motorcyclists riding heavy motorcycles with lights alight, staging a mysterious performance of illuminated static and moving shadows. For these performances Jagodič often employed the avant-garde dancer Jasna Knez together with musicians Lado Jakša and Igor Krivokapić. Notable multimedia performances, projects-concepts-actions (cabarets, scenes, provocations, appeals, protests) include Beatles of Pilštanj (1965), The Path to Piper Club, Without Ringing (1970), Captured Dimensions, Panta rhei I (1971), Longing (1972), Passing Away – Chile, Baby called Technology (1973), Self-portrait (1975), Hot Palette of a Painter (1976), Centenary of the Birth of the Poet Oton Zupančič (1977-78), Venus of the Atomic Age, Metamorphosis Veneris (1978), Quo vadis homo? (1980), Panta rhei II (1982), Steel Horizon (1983), Eco Market (1984), Building of the Foundation Stone of the Junij Collection (1985), Fish Funeral (1986), Musike (1992), Toast (1986), Good Morning, Mr Orwell! (1993), Abraham post festum (1994), Pact (1998), The Last Buffalo Marathon, Panta rhei III (1999), The Transition Thief, Hommage to the Ministry for Culture (2001), Eco End (2008), Offering-Altar (2012), and Ecnarf-Enats I. II. (2013)
Stane Jagodič became acquainted with the Slovene classical and modern fine arts as far back as in primary school, mainly through printed media. In 1959 he made his own album of collages entitled 'Slovene Artists'. It was then that he created his first abstract compositions. At the School of Design in Ljubljana (1961–1964) he was influenced by the Slovene 'Vesna club', but in his spare time he was creating both realistic and naturalistic drawings representing the scenery of the countryside, expressing his nostalgic feelings for his homeland (abandoned farmhouses). At school he got to know the achievements of the modern world, in drawing, painting, sculpture and design. In 1964 he created some compositions influenced by constructivism, op art and informel. During his teaching year at Kozjansko (1965) he published his first caricatures treating social themes. This kind of expression, which he later gave the name 'satirical drawing', strongly marked, with its spiritual and creative dimension, his later multimedia performances filled with symbolic, metaphysical and science fiction messages. Following his time at the Academy of Fine Arts he fell under the influence of abstract expressionism.
He painted abstract oil and acrylic paintings, as well as colour inks (poured on and blown). He named this last technique rose-shaped, square and checked tachism. At the same time, he expressed himself intensely through caricatures, satirical drawings, photomontage, object-montage, assemblage, performance etc.
By the same token he did have some initial role models, like the pioneers of modern fine art: Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and de Chirico, to whom he also dedicated the international exhibitions of the Junij Group (Grupa Junij). His other role models included avant-garde artists like John Heartfield, Rene Magritte, Paul Klee and Vladimir Tatlin. His modern creations were equally influenced by classical religious art, like his early motif Crucifix, a lithograph from 1969. Later, this religious influence was also felt in his compositions, like the use of strict symmetry, diptych, triptych and sequences, like the succession of images in the Passion. The mysterious archaic religious relics, built into boxes and covered by glass, are the precursors of his object montages, also mounted into various boxes. At the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s he was largely occupied with kinetic objects; the artist's childhood years spent in the countryside should be mentioned, years strongly marked by simple village scenes with picturesque light&shadow tricks.
Later, when he began to develop his own sense of artistic poetics he often transcended some lesser artists from both the East and the West in terms of their ideas and techniques.
Important cycles in visual arts; directions & ideas
Jagodič launched into a new spirit and technique in a big way in the early 1970s, as illustrated by his cycles: Tinned Laughter, Captured Dimension, Mirror of the Absurd, Symbol of Existence, Injured Organism, Zoo Poetics, Eco End, Magic Panorama, Panta Rhei, Power of Energy, Worshipper of Light, Poetry of Light and X-Ray Art. In the second half of the 1970s and later, other cycles followed: Silver Horizon, Steel Horizon, Magic Core, Mirror Design, Mail Art Satire, Metamorphosis Veneris, Horizon of Rust, Satirical Homage to 1985, Graphisms of Plasters, Anatome-Secare, Art Paradox, Good morning, Mr Orwell!, Tehnicos Poeticus, Zoo Poetics...
His ideas were based on a philosophical and humanistic knowledge of the world and influenced by socio-political circumstances at home and abroad. In caricature and other media he consistently focussed on ecological, socio-political and anti-militaristic themes with satire and humour. As a humanist he has always been sensitive to human relationships. His creativity then is a response to numerous impulses and expressions of our technically absurd and consumerist-driven world. His socio-political images are often grotesque, but not nihilistic. With his committed expressions he warns and urges civilisation toward self-reflection and awareness, so as to avoid converting our fabulous technical progress into an apocalyptic boomerang. On the one hand, he admires certain visual aspects and the complicated functioning of machines as the result of historic collective thinking; but on the other hand he is afraid of the careless control exercised over dangerous devices that have the potential to wreak both individual and mass destruction. He is also opposed to all the fear-mongering perpetrated by militants who are visibly losing any sense of ethical and moral values, values that have been constructed and enriched over thousands of years.
When he was illustrating the primary school textbook The Evolution Theory back in 1969, he carefully studied fauna, including prehistoric animals. In his satirically humorous motifs he has continued to use the animal world to stir eco-awareness, as well as humorous fables to criticise Homo sapiens. All these motifs are presented in the forms of caricature, photomontage and three-dimensional objects.
His early huge-format photomontage, which comprises a picturesque duplicating of butterflies, entitled The Funeral of a Butterfly (1971) is of particular interest. In his retrospective exhibition on the theme of Zoo Poetics, held in the Jakopič Gallery in Ljubljana in 2008, he presented hundreds of animal motifs in various techniques, depicting the global ecological crisis and symbolising the grotesque side of man – the man who plays the role of a fearful rabbit or a blood-thirsty lion. He also employed motifs like primitive dinosaurs, which take possession of technologically complicated machinery and digital techniques created by Homo sapiens (scientific fantasy).
New Technical Procedures
Caught Dimension / Digital Constructivism
Since 1964 Jagodič has focussed passionately on various linear structures like nets, cages and modelling constructions in combination with mirrors. He called this technique 'cyber or digital-constructivism’, which influenced his satirical drawings and caricature (1974–1975), and foretold the proliferation of computers and the computer age. A steel cage, a net enveloping some trapped organic bodies, the use of various lights and reflective lighting effects and picturesque shadows are for Jagodič the primary source-elements of his creativity. The linearly agitated form of the cage means captivity, a certain anguish, but also the fixing of a human being in infinite space. Two clocks with a mirror instead of a dial are caught in a two-tower cage (Caught Dimension, 1971) and throw the viewer into a timeless dimension. Jagodič also captured a stone, a candle, a lightbulb, a reflector, a metronome, a vacuum cleaner, a fish, a chicken egg, a prehistoric animal, a cast of human legs, a plastic baby, Mona Lisa and a nude woman into his cages or nets. With all of these motifs he expressed more or less comprehensible symbols. In this play of visual combinations and processes he often comes to a paradox that is particularly expressed in the motif of Captured Trap (1969), where he has filled the first half of the entrance to the cage with synthetic resin in the form of a box. In this way he has prevented, in a symbolic and poetic sense, the action of catching and killing an animal, and at the same time, performed an unusual aesthetic operation.
Tin / Cage / Paraffin / Spraygram
In the early 1970s Jagodič also produced a number of motifs using tin cans, with the cycle (Tinned Laughter, 1972) exhibited in the Town Gallery in Ljubljana. At the same time he presented a work entitled Captured Organism, 1972 where the body of a ravaged white mouse is sunk into paraffin. He made a similar combination with an exhibit representing the evolution of a fish, from egg to adult whole, sunk in paraffin, and after that, also captured in a steel cage (Captured Embryo 1972).
In 1977 he made a series of pictures using colour sprays in the form of a photogram, and called them 'spraygrams'. With silver, gold and copper spray paint he gave metallic surfaces to stones, wooden and plastic objects, which mimicked, in their approach, a sculptor’s casts. In 1983 he put together the exhibition Silver Horizon.
X-Ray Art, Anatome Secare / Multiplications of the object and figure
At the outset of the 1970s, Jagodič was already penetrating the inner parts of the human body using drawing-caricature. For the magazine 'Problemi' he drew a series of brains that featured a kind of paradoxical symbolism (1970). He wanted to underline the fact that he had systematically begun to penetrate the human anatomy. He produced photomontages using medical x-ray films and called them 'x-ray art' (1972). He was not interested in the inside of the human body, to better represent through advanced anatomy, the outside of a human or animal figure, in the sense of the Renaissance-era studies of Leonardo da Vinci. He wanted to make visitors to his exhibitions aware of the fact that there exists another type of beauty, that of the visual interior of a living being. His x-ray pictures in their tender transparency and blue colours greatly contributed to this particular theory of beauty. In his 3-dimensional works of art, using anatomy, he used real, natural human or animal skeletons as well as plastic casts (anatome-secare), and an aluminium cast of male legs.
Gradually, he began to penetrate into the core of mechanical devices by means of drawings, photos and 3-dimensional procedures. He simply dismantled and took apart waste computers, photocopiers and other machines with mysterious entrails. He studied their picturesque cores, admiring their impressive functions and linearly dynamic structures. The motifs described in this chapter were shown in retrospect in 1999 at the exhibition Tehnicos Poeticos, in the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana. It is also characteristic of Jagodič's creative process to take an object or figure and duplicate it, thus creating a raster of repeated singular or multi-line elements. This approach to composition creates a picturesque rhythm similar to both organic structures found in nature and to inorganic structures found in the urban environment. Already at the outset of the 1970s the artist was anticipating, through his manually created satirical drawings, the computer-driven duplication and multiplication of the future.
Permanent and temporary technical collaborators in the creation of art works:
During the making of photographs Jagodič was most often greatly assisted by (previously mentioned) photographers Marijan Pal, Matija Pavlovec and Oskar Dolenc.
Other photographers include, Tihomir Pinter, Joco Žnidaršič, Milan Orožen Adamič, Tone Stojko, Slavko Ciglenečki, Franc Štrukelj etc.
With film directors Iztok Tory, Ludvik Burnik, Milan Lebar, Stojan Femec, Andrej Heferle etc.
In some photomontages Jagodič has used journalistic and advertisement photographs published by: Der Spiegel, Stern, Quick, Bunte, Burda (Germany); Epoca, L'Europeo, Gente (Italy); Life, Newsweek, Time, Playboy (USA); Match, Photo, Lui (France) etc. Some landscape photographs have been taken from varius calendars, monographs of cities and countries. Jagodič has also used reproductions from the book Encyclopedia Anatomica, Museo La specola Florence (Taschen, 1999)
Co-operation with the silkscreen printers: Silvester Apollonio, Janez Matelič and Geodetski zavod Slovenije.
Collaborators on the construction of objects made of wood, metal, glass, mirror, plaster, plastic and print: Samo Zorec, Željko Ulčnik, Matej Kosmač, Mirsad Begić, Jože Fajs, Jože Puntar, Ivan Debelak, Stane Šramel and firms: Firm Ulčnik, Inštitut Jožef Stefan, Mineral, Copy Center (Ljubljana), Gorenje (Velenje), Steklarna Rogaška Slatina (Rogaška Slatina), Andotehna (Ribnica), Bullyland (Spraitbach), Unica Toy (Postojna), Schleich GmbH (Schwabisch Gmund) etc.
Performance
Metaphysical Presence, Surrealism and the Tendency toward Science Fiction
Jagodič’s expressions outside the arena of engagement include poetic ideas, surrealist and metaphysical visions, and motifs ranging from micro to macrocosm – way back in 1959 he painted a work entitled The Universe. From the very beginning he has been including photos from space into photomontages or created them using underground structures.
Jagodič is enchanted by the rich imaginary world of science fiction, with its unusual combination of elements, which led him to create various actions and performances in which he acted himself and occasionally with extras, especially avant-garde female dancers that focussed on figure-movement-sound. These dancers were largely hidden behind white or red screens, behind nets with lights and props and illuminated by various kinetic sources. During the performance of Steel Horizon (1983) the dancers behind the red screen and net were joined by three motorcyclists riding heavy motorcycles with lights alight, staging a mysterious performance of illuminated static and moving shadows. For these performances Jagodič often employed the avant-garde dancer Jasna Knez together with musicians Lado Jakša and Igor Krivokapić. Notable multimedia performances, projects-concepts-actions (cabarets, scenes, provocations, appeals, protests) include Beatles of Pilštanj (1965), The Path to Piper Club, Without Ringing (1970), Captured Dimensions, Panta rhei I (1971), Longing (1972), Passing Away – Chile, Baby called Technology (1973), Self-portrait (1975), Hot Palette of a Painter (1976), Centenary of the Birth of the Poet Oton Zupančič (1977-78), Venus of the Atomic Age, Metamorphosis Veneris (1978), Quo vadis homo? (1980), Panta rhei II (1982), Steel Horizon (1983), Eco Market (1984), Building of the Foundation Stone of the Junij Collection (1985), Fish Funeral (1986), Musike (1992), Toast (1986), Good Morning, Mr Orwell! (1993), Abraham post festum (1994), Pact (1998), The Last Buffalo Marathon, Panta rhei III (1999), The Transition Thief, Hommage to the Ministry for Culture (2001), Eco End (2008), Offering-Altar (2012), and Ecnarf-Enats I. II. (2013)
Hij werkt met veel verschillende technieken, dat past erg bij IMT. Wat ik vooral interessant vind aan zijn werk is de manier waarop hij nabewerking gebruikt. Hij bewerkt zijn fotografie achteraf, waardoor er een beeld ontstaat met veel contrast en soms ook felle kleuren. Het kleurenpalet wat hij gebruikt spreekt mij ook aan. Heel minimalistisch, maar toch erg sprekend. Hij maakt veel gebruikt van harde kleuren zoals rood, geel en blauw. Ook werkt hij veel met zwart en wit.
Het werk van Poetry of shadow and light spreekt mij ook erg aan. Hij gebruikt een soort kooi waar hij een lamp in heeft gezet en die fotografeerde hij. Het levert een interessant beeld op met veel dynamiek.
Hieronder is mij Zine te zien. Tijdens de skills lessen heb ik dit gemaakt als een soort ode aan Stane Jagodic. Ik heb een aantal beelden van hem bij elkaar gezet en zijn gedichten erbij geplaatst. Ik denk dat dit boekje maar een kleine impressie geeft van het veelzijdige werk van Stane, maar de sfeer waarin hij werkt is wel duidelijk.
