Tomaž Tomažin, ‘Series 360′

Tomaž Tomažin, 'Attempt to Levitate' (detail), 2010

From November 3 until November 23, 2010

Sokolski dom Škofja Loka


Series 360 is a serial of photographic panoramas presented in light boxes, which Tomažin began in the year 2007. Using montage technic he combines photographs into panoramas that cover the entire 360 degrees of space around the recording axis. Photograps show carefully designed mise-en-scène in which Tomažin appears multiplied in different roles and carefully directed stories which are in contrast with the entiresness of space always fragmented. Tomaž Tomažin graduated in sculpture at the Fine Art Academy in Ljubljana (2000), where he finished also postgraduate study in new media and sculpture (2004).
Presented in light boxes, Series 360 is a series of photographic panoramas that Tomažin began in 2007. Using a montage technique, the photographs are combined into 360-degree panoramas around the recording axis. Photographs present carefully chosen spaces (Postojnska cave, artist´s apartment, fitness centre, etc.) in which Tomažin acts multiplied in different roles. The role which the artist takes on with the help of different costumes, requisites and poses in some cases corresponds with the chosen space (marksman in a shooting range) but in other cases the space and the actor are in humorous and even surreal contradictory (acrobat in the National University Library, the figure wearing bath robe in public space, etc.). In addition to himself, Tomažin often places other actors in different relations within the context of a carefully devised mise-en-scène, by way of which, scenes are constructed to form imaginary stories, which, in contrast to the entirety of space, are always fragmented. Fragmentation is the effect of the structure, of a photography which is constructed from more frames/episodes. Beside this Tomažin combines frames/fragments of a story in a way that deprive the viewer from any possibility of perceiving the story as a homogenously narrated whole.

The illusion of entirety and certainty is an important element of photographs viewed in the context of a series. The succession of photographs in which Tomažin assimilates different roles and identities, one after another, shows identity – as such – as something not whole, fragmented and uncertain. As with Lacan’s theory, which explains subjectivity with the aid of the concept of fiction in which the self and its identifications are connected to the notion of imaginary, Series 360 also portrays the self as a junk room of imaginary identifications. Employment of the montage technique, photographic media and reference to film stills photographic genre (in film industry used for advertising movies), is certainly not accidental. It correlates with the notion of the self as a deception, and ultimately makes us reflect upon the constructed nature of identification models employed by the medium of photography and film.

Urška Jurman