''Peace Beyond Boundaries''

MULTIMEDIAEVENT
on the MURISEL GRAZ 30.06.- 07.07.2008

Live preformances of local and international artists

Hotel MONS,

23.11.2007-5.1.2008

Exhibition of art works

By painter Špela Cvetko- Returning journey

Critic

Anamarija Stibilj Šajn

Creative thought of a graduate painter Špela Cvetko travels unstoppably and infinitely into Creation, where she discovers special vibrations and realizes that the process of creation is present in its entire fullness in the Universe itself. This is the driving force giving the rhythm, changing and transforming it. In the creativeness of the Creation she seeks her expression. And she finds it. For in these cosmic extensions dwells the world of ideas as well. The painter approaches, enters and discovers it. In her creative moment she feels it as a kind of revelation.
Grasping from the spring of creativity is the touch of an idea, which she personally upgrades, giving strength and her own pulse to it. She denotes it with the intimation of symbolic, philosophical, and metaphysical applications.

Material and spiritual dimensions are constantly intertwined in the paintings of Špela Cvetko.
Happening is indicated by the indefinite number of combinations of vertical and horizontal code record in which omnipresence is captured. There also exists a golden core in this system and it is the essence of the painter’s creative aspirations. It is the world of ideas, which is not marked only with the special colour but also with the form, being the one of the circle, which personifies it. The circle is the image and allegory of perfection, ideal, and unity; it is a faultless shape, a source of everything we are capable of, can and want to do; it is a beauty in its highest aesthetic norm. The circle is the grand-source of ideas, the centre of omnipotence through which the creative truth is manifested and articulated into the world of appearance. It is the essence, but still, the painter does not place it into the centre of her compositions. She shifts it slightly on the edge of the painting thus intensifying the enigma of her creativity.

A round form dwells in the system of verticals and horizontals, in which its diversity is even more expressed. Indeed, it is so much different from the code record formed by the sides of the image screen and the structure of the canvas, continuing into the form of creative aspiration through the painter’s visual process. The circle glows even more magnificently and perfectly in such a space, realising itself in a complete fullness. Spear-shaped silhouettes cut into hallowed atmospheric state and arouse it. They are the shapes that personify individualists who travel across the universe, from conscious to transcendental, returning to the source and venture again on the path of new experience and cognition.

Špela Cvetko's paintings possess a peculiar surface motion. The painter achieves it through a collage intervention of different materials (even pieces of copper) as well as materialised colour coats, at the same time using the primary structure of the canvas. The relief gives her creations a specific artistic dimension, in which colours gain new values. When beams of light pass over the image fields they illuminate them from different angles, with different values and enter into every tiny, secret small corner, and the view opens from material concrete surface through thin, colour fluid windows on infinite spatial illusion. Supplementary contents revive in vibrating epidermis of the painting and enigmas of new stories are revealed, which echo silently in the distance of profoundness.

Colours are a variable component of art expression. Through their suggestive and symbolic capacity the painter constantly forms colourful, monumental, energetic powerful images. Colours enable her to picture the qualities of terrestrial objects; they are poetry of materially perceptible; they are the carriers of perceptions and observations as well as feelings. A special meaning in her colour palette has the golden colour, which materialises the most valuable, the most sacred. That is the world of ideas.

Paintings are only a fictitious play of variegated, abstractly designed art happening, where individual forms appear for which content foundation can be found. But in reality they are revelation of the truth of creative process. Furthermore, they are a constant dialogue between construction and destruction. Antagonism is present even between the painter’s eruption and restoration of conciliatory state. The atmosphere of peace sways above the image stage in spite of vivacious happening. A special state becomes predominant, inviting a viewer to come closer to a round form, to feel the source, to scoop from the spring, to open his eyes and recognise the recognition itself, and to be able to identify with it for a moment.

Špela Cvetko’s paintings bring the recognition that symbolism, in past periods such an esteemed art movement, enviably continues in her opus. How mistaken was the thinking, which depicted symbolism as a depressive force at the beginning of the 20th century, which disturbs and even prevents the development of the abstract art. Now the symbolism literally flows into abstract compositions. In their synergy the painter strolls creatively and sets on the Returning Journey.

Špela Cvetko travels. On her artistic journey she is continuously researching, absorbing, enhancing her artistic expression, and in her latest creative endeavour lands in the world of pure ideas. Indeed, landings are a new stage, new vigorous steps on clearly marked path of the painter.

Galerija Peroz na Duplici pri Kamniku
Group exhibition "Women in the art" - November 2006

The exhibition with the main motive of the figure of the woman offered wide spectrum of the interpretation of women's principle in the art. Painters from variety of cultural and social backgrounds develop their own vision of woman and feminine symbols.
Young and prosperous painter Špela Cvetko introduced her auto portrait and Asian colored painting titled "The Dragon's Bath". The composition reminds on dynamic japanese mockups, the motive of the dragon in combination with turquoise water and the female body gives symbolic and mystic impression...

Article - Novi Tednik - Maj 2006

Razstava v AGORA Gallery
- Chelsea, New York City,
20-Feb-2007 - 12-Mar-2007

Representation of Spela Cvetko's art works
in ARTisSpectrum, The Chelsea Perspective

by Aaron DeLand

"The abstract and the symbolic collide with great effect in the mixed media works of Slovenian artist Spela Cvetko. Classically trained in Slovenian schools, Spela frequently addresses the subject of inspiration and attempts to divine the source of an artist's creativity in her "Returning Journey" series. Each of these works features a shimmering, radiating core juxtaposed against a chaotic background. Within each core, we see two abstract shapesЧ derived from spearheadsЧwhich appear to be rips in the canvas through which one can glimpse another world. "They are the passage," Spela explains; "The door between the worlds. [They] are expressing the message that nobody is alone." The violence of these abstract works is striking: color and form clash throughout the canvas, and meaning rises from the conflict.
Spela's personal symbolism gives rise to the dualism of artistic intent and individual interpretation. A viewer divines much from the statements in the works imbued by the artist, but then adds his or her own critical viewpoint to the reading of the painting. Through this ambiguity, Spela forces us to confront the source of our own inspiration; we are inspired by her own investigation into the workings of her thought process, and are invited to investigate our personal methods. In this way, Spela Cvetko allows her work to become our own."

The magazine ARTisSPECTRUM
published by Agora Gallery

Article - Novi Tednik

Collective Exhibition:
Contemporary Art at its Best

by Aaron DeLand

"Many artists choose to employ abstraction as a tool for representing the immediacy of the soul. Slovenian artist, Spela Cvetko creates entrancing works that employ the circle as a catalyst for meditative repose in her audience. Her works possess a timeless quality and the distinct ability to inspire ideation through elemental symbols."

Galleria L'Agostiniana, Piazza del Popolo,
Roma - Razstava "Obrazi sveta" - September 2007