Gregor Kregar is a finalist in the 2010 McClelland Sculpture Survey, one of Australias most significant outdoor sculpture exhibitions. Displayed throughout 16 hectares of bush and landscaped gardens, the McClelland Sculpture Survey is intended to provide sculptors the opportunity to present their works in an outdoor exhibition context. The exhibition is accompanied by a major comprehensive catalogue and the finalists are eligible for a $100,000 acquisitive award.

Reflective Simulations is on show at the McClelland Sculpture Survey Award until 20 February, 2011.

Gregor Kregar has recently returned from Abu Dhabi where he was installing Twisting the Void 2, a major work as part of the Abu Dhabi International Sculpture Symposium 2010 (ADISS). ASISS is a cultural event showcasing public art and sculpture in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. More information on the event and works included can be seen on their website.

May 2010

Gregor Kregar

Summer 2009

From live sheep to ceramic piggy banks and giant, floating geometric shapes, Gregor Kregar’s sculptural menagerie suggests that he is not an artist seduced by a single subject. Nor can one material tie him down; he picks and chooses between glass and steel, plastic and terracotta, cardboard, video, photography and livestock. Like the varied combinations of polyhedrons he creates, this Slovenian-born, Auckland-based artist is indeed multi-faceted. – Talia Linz

Gregor Kregar, Piercing the clouds, 2008; stainless steel; video and lambda print photographs; two sculptures, 300 x 250 x 150 cm and 300 x 200 x 150 cm; three wall sculptures, 180 x 120 x 110 cm, 150 x 130 x 100 cm and 80 x 60 x 40 cm; three photographs, 200 x 125 cm each; video, 60 secs duration, dual projection; installation view, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney

Designed by Jazzmax Architects the feature glass building uses state-of-the-art features to create an environmentally friendly structure. Kregars two large hanging structures (each 5.5 x 5 x 4 metres) are created from mirror polished stainless steeel that reflects and fragments the environment they inhabit as well as echoing invisible molecular structures. Commissioned especially for the new building the works can be seen in the main foyer at the NZI Centre, corner Fanshawe St and Market Place.

DWELLING FOR NORDUNG

Since the beginning of time, mankind has considered it as an expression of its Earthly weakness and inadequacy to be bound to the Earth, to be unable to free itself from the mysterious shackles of gravity. Not without good reason then has the concept of the transcendental always been associated with the idea of weightlessness, the power “to be able freely to rise into the sky.” And most people even today still take it as a dogma that it is indeed unthinkable for Earthly beings ever to be able to escape the Earth. Is this point of view really justified?

Hermann Potocnik Noordung , ‘The Problem With Space Travel’

Gregor Kregar currently lives and works in Berlin; the city where the visionary Slovenian engineer and space scientist Herman Potocnik Ordung, first published his book  ‘The Problem With Space Travel’ in 1928. This book was one of the most influential texts contributing to development of Space exploration and rocket science.

While in Berlin Gregor is working on a structure inspired by Nordung’s great and anticipatory vision of the future. This work will further explore the possibility of mobile, floating utopian architecture. The sculptural construction will be designed for a location within Mestni Trg, in the old city center of Ljubljana. The work will be suspended in the air and will look like a reflective, crystal cloud.

The work will be showed in conjunction with a major survey exhibition of Slovenian Contemporary Sculpture in September 2009.

VANISH, CONNELLS BAY SCULPTURE PARK, WAIHEKE, NEW ZEALAND
To be installed in April 2008

Mockup

Gregor Kregar is currently working on a large site-specific outdoor sculptural installation called Vanish. This installation is commissioned by Connells Bay Sculpture Park as one of their major projects for 2008. Vanish will be the final and largest self-portrait work from a series of sculptures Kregar has worked on for the last four years. This series of works began with the sculptural installation I appear and disappear in 2003. Vanish will consist of 160 ceramic figures. There will be 10 sets of 16 self-portrait figures; each set of 10 will be glazed in a different colour. The size of the figures will vary from 140 cm for the biggest one down to about 35cm for the smallest one. The figures will be positioned to start with the largest ones at the bottom/front of the site and the smallest ones on the top/back of the site. It is Kregar’s aim that the work will activate the space by changing perspective points. An exaggerated perspective will be created when walking up the valley towards the work yet when approaching the work from the back the work will fan out from the vanishing point.

Vanish will be a self-portrait work yet at the same time it will also encompass a portrait of the anonymous person. The work questions how identity is reduced the more it is reproduced. Will the artist be shrinking or growing? This depends on which way the viewer would approach the work. Essentially Vanish will be a humanist work that will paradoxically depend on the point of view of the observer; it will suggest both the fragility of a particular art form and human life itself.