Aleksander Velišček: Gullivers

A plus A hosts a personal exhibition by the young Slovenian artist Aleksander Velišček, on show from the 21st February to the 26th April 2015.
The exhibition presents a selection of Velišček’s recent works, seven unconventional paintings that represent intellectuals, writers, journalists, politicians like Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaja, Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. Each one of these portraits carry the signs of a political struggle, the defence of an idea, an entire life dedicated to the pursue of an ideal, which emerge from the heavy painterly traits.
Just like Swift’s Gulliver, the human figures painted by the artist appear to be tied, not by ropes, but by organic structures similar to orthopedic supports.

The polysemic title of Velišček show not only evocates the protagonist of Swift’s novel; in fact, the word gulliver is also used to signify “head” by the characters of the novel “A Clockwork Orange”, by Anthony Burgess.
In this sense, the violence that permeates the book and the film is contextualized by a lexicon able to reveal the political and social causes behind it, just like in Velišček paintings.