The Path of the Goddess of Many Names

I.

Ezra Pound, the poet who in many of his verses invokes the Goddess of Many Names, one of which is Isis, and who for many years pursued the idea of reinstalling a statue of the goddess Venus among the ruins of an ancient temple in Terracina, wrote the following in his Canto CXIII:

The Gods have not returned. "They have never left us." 

They have not returned.

The answer in inverted commas is the answer of Tradition. If it seems to us that the ancient, invisibly grounded world ruled by the Gods has disappeared with the advent of modernity, that is only the perspective of the people of the modern world, who are carried away by time, while the ancient, invisibly grounded world is eternal.

"Oh, if they only knew how alive she is," exclaims Boštjan Kavčič about the lost Posočje Isis.

If they only knew ... They do not know ... Therefore: "They have not returned."

For Ezra Pound dying is when we no longer make Gods out of beauty.

But how can we invoke the return of something that has been there all along? 

The Goddess is there, but she is no longer visible to people. Boštjan Kavčič is trying to make the Goddess visible again. 

Boštjan Kavčič combines his visualisation of the Goddess of Many Names with the symbolic return of a lost cult statuette.

In 1840, a small statue of Isis, 15 centimetres high, was found on the plateau of Šentviška planota in Slovenia. It was kept in Gorizia for a while, after which every trace of it was lost. 

And Boštjan Kavčič is trying to place his thirteen statues of the Goddess of Many Names into a relationship with this lost statuette, trying somehow to replace the lost figurine.

He is not trying to replace it by imitating its iconography in any way but is trying to bring back to consciousness the presence of the Goddess as he experienced her in the fusion of vision and mental construction, whilst contemplating the Pillars of Light and Faronika the Fish and with a consciousness of the ancient symbolism of the caduceus and the Egyptian ankh.

Her rounded spiral body bears at the top a fireball of the sun touching it with three points. Past, present, future ... The sculptor sees in it the union of fire and water and the flow of life energy that leads from chaos to order.

He is not simply concerned with creating an artefact, but with creating a genuine cult statue in our time. For him, this is not an allusion to the iconography of antiquity, but an attempt to truly revive the sacred energies. 

We can ask ourselves: can the making of a statue of the Goddess, of whom our times have no knowledge of how very much alive she is, be her real cult statue? Or is it all just a kind of "imitation"?

But what is authenticity anyway? Interestingly, we already encounter in our time a process that acts as an "imitation" of what seems to have been lost, in order to make us aware that it is not we, but the eternal knowledge to which we no longer have access, that has been lost. Take the Corpus Hermeticum, its treatise XVI, in which the god Asclepius speaks. In late antiquity, when a certain ancient knowledge seemed lost, an unknown author made contact with it by writing in his ancient Greek as if it were a translation of an ancient Egyptian text:

Expressed in the original, this dark language shows the clear sense of the words. For even the sounds, even the tone of these words of the Egyptians carry the energy of the things they say. Therefore, if it is possible for you, O King – and everything is possible for you – keep this language untranslated, lest such great mysteries come among the Greeks that the haughty language of the Greeks, cosmetically adorned as it were, does not destroy the majesty, the power and the energy of our names.

With these words written in Greek, the ancient Egyptian original emerges in the invisible, clear, untranslated, quietly piercing the darkness with its light.

When I hear Boštjan Kavčič talk about his work, I have the impression that he is trying to evoke such a presence with these statues of the Goddess. And it is no coincidence that he wants to bring Isis from Posočje back to Egypt – and from Egypt back to the Soča. 

A bold, ambitious plan. 

Will he succeed in evoking this presence?

II.

When Boštjan Kavčič talks about his sculpture, he always strikes me as someone who seeks contact with ancient sacred traditions in his art – not in the sense of imitating old forms, but with an extremely lively, seismographically sensitive perception of the spiritual events of today, which we can only really try to understand if we look for their hidden motions. 

Kavčič is a sculptor who revives the now completely neglected "classical" techniques of stone carving and the refined processing of bronze and other materials, but for him, sculptures are never just objects, they are always actions that awaken awareness of broader events in geographical space and the universe. 

It is no coincidence that as an artist he studied with two of the most interesting Slovenian artists: Marko Pogačnik, who was one of the pioneers of the neo-avant-garde in this field in the 1960s and the main initiator of the internationally significant movement OHO, who later developed a special way of sculpting "lithopuncture", healing of the earth (in the early 1990s he also wrote an extremely interesting essay on the return of the Goddess), and Dragan Živadinov, one of the most important artists of the so-called retro-avant-garde, who developed "cosmokinetic theatre".

For Kavčič, the essence of art is immaterial, spiritual. That is why, unlike most artists today, for whom contemporaneity is the only imperative, he strives to create something solid, lasting – and uses noble, durable materials to do so. Théophile Gautier writes in the poem Art, taken from his book Enamels and Cameos, about the statues that remain when cities crumble to dust. Boštjan Kavčič strives for such solidity in works of art – but he believes that such art can prevent the world from crumbling to dust. 

As he says himself, his work is about life and maintaining balance.

Just as the ancient legend of Faronika the Fish, which carries the world on its back, is about maintaining balance and the fish preventing the world from collapsing. This poem is a legend and also known from a Slovenian folk song that Ivan Pregelj, a Slovenian expressionist writer who lived not far from where the Posočje Isis was found, included in one of his novels. These were also the home places of Boštjan Kavčič, his genius loci.

The sculptor also connects Faronika the Fish with the symbolism of the snake; when I met him personally, he kept telling me about snakes and the legends associated with them.

Jewish tradition cursed the snake because the two people who followed its advice to attain divinity failed. Therefore, the serpent was associated with evil. The Hermetic tradition sees it differently and continues the heroic experiment. Boštjan Kavčič, who inserts the symbolism, the rods of Hermes, into the statues of the Goddess, says: "Saint George does not slay the dragon, but rides it." 

III.

The bodies of this Goddess are not only bodies; they are also landscapes. The sculptor has tried to encode esoteric geography into them – and has at the same time sent them on a journey himself.

The lost statuette of the Posočje Isis connects two distant landscapes. The Tolmin Mountains in Slovenia and Egypt. Two rivers, the Soča and the Nile. 

The fact that a statuette of Isis was found on Šentviška planota was completely unexpected, but still not so shocking, since the cult of Isis was widespread throughout the Roman Empire and such a figurine could be found practically anywhere. 

But the connection between these two regions is not accidental for Boštjan Kavčič. With his work, he tries to raise awareness of a mysterious connection hidden behind apparent coincidence.

The hills that stretch between Idrija and Bohinj are no ordinary hills. When we enter this space, we enter a magical realm that has its own temporality and its own distances that immeasurably exceed the distances we physically travel in this space. 

It is a place where, among other things, the oldest preserved musical instrument in the world was found – in a mysterious cave called Divje babe. 

These are places where pagan beliefs, the so-called ancient religions, have been preserved underground for centuries, even in the time of Christianity. 

The sculptor took me to these hills on the first full moon after the New Year. And it was a remarkable experience that I find difficult to put into words. Antonin Artaud once discovered the "mountains of signs" among the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico. These hills can also be experienced as the "mountains of signs". 

Boštjan Kavčič condenses these signs into the bodies of the Goddess. And when he sends these statues on a journey from the Soča to the Nile, only to return from there to the Soča, this is not something that has been invented. This is simply the path of the Goddess of Many Names. 

Miklavž Komelj

The starting point for the considerations in preparing the exhibition at Rajhenburg Castle was the history of the castle complex, which is heavily burdened by the tragic events of the last century. The settlement of the destitute Trappist Order in 1881 probably had a favourable influ- ence on the castle’s surroundings but was less the cause of their expulsion. In April 1941, the German Nazi authorities took over the castle and set up an exile camp in the higher buildings on the manor. Its former peace was not returned during post-war events when the castle was nationalised in 1947. It was in fact soon used as a penal institution for political prisoners with the aim of their comprehensive “re-education” (Fürst, 2016).

Kavčič approaches each space in which he exhibits his works both meticulously and intuitively. When he sets up sculptures, he does so in tune with the energy, feeling and thought that the space evokes. His curiosity is piqued by historical themes and local features. This time it has nothing to do with the inherited tradition of Tolmin, but he was attracted by the place where the Sava River meanders from the Litija-Radeče district through the Posavje plain. The artist believes that the natural energy flows of the wider surroundings and the grounds of the Brestanica castle have come to a stand- still, which is why he wants to restore them to their original state with the help of natural elements, natural resources and the visitors to the exhibition.

Boštjan Kavčič works in classical sculpture, and the stones he cuts are more than just material for his work. He is on the lookout for the right piece, but it is always the latter that finds him. He marvels at the fact that stone is not just a solid substance, inanimate nature that he can shape into an associative image with the right strokes of the grinder. Geological periods of time have passed to allow it to come into being. Rain fell over billions of years, rivers eroded the surface and carried sediment into the seas. Without witnesses, the mountains rose. For the artist, a piece of stone is therefore a predisposition of an inconceivably complex fabric of the earth’s history that has accumulated in the wealth of layers over so many years and has also absorbed the first organisms into itself. The artist does not shape the stone into fictitious forms but works on its surface by drawing spiral notches in it through which he restores the flow of energy.

Transitions Between Spaces

The exhibition is located in seven locations on the ground floor, in the cellar and in the attic of the castle tower. On the ground floor, under the arcades, the visitor is lured in by the installation Be the Light. Here he receives a lantern, that is The Bringer of the Light, built up on three levels, which metaphorically e plains the threefold division of the world. The lantern is the bearer of the idea of the exhibition, i.e. it establishes a connection between the three worlds, which according to shamanic tradition are divided into the middle (earthly), upper (heavenly) and lower (under- ground) worlds. The shamanic concept of the world was linked to the concept of the soul as the essence of human existence and originated from the image of birds living on the tree of life in the upper world (Gorbačeva, 2019).After lighting a candle on the top shelf of the lantern, the visitor makes his way to the cellar, where he walks down a narrow corridor past a stone vessel filled with crushed flint, an installation called The Inner Sun. Here he chooses a pebble and places it on the lower shelf of the lantern. He then enters the space with the set-up of The Vortices of the Sava River, where he is greeted by seven buckets filled with water from the Sava. Immersed here are the sculptures ORG LXXXVI – LCII (Water Vor- tex), even though the viewer can hardly notice them because of the muddy water. He scoops the water, pours it into a bottle and places it on the middle shelf of the lamp.

He returns to the ground floor, to the late Gothic chapel from the beginning of the 16th century. After viewing, he places the candle next to a stone star called Seven Rays. The star is also the formal successor to Kavčič’s ORGanisms, which consists of seven identical sculptures. In the form of a curve, it expands into a shallow volume that barely protrudes from the ground and only forms a star shape in the composition of the circularly arranged elements. The installation continues in the next, so-called Romanesque room, which is the complete opposite of the previous one. In a low, dark ambience that evokes anxious feelings, the artist has placed stone tears and piles of salt underneath, the installation The Sea of Tears. Under the stone tear that addresses the viewer, he or she takes the salt and pours it into a bottle of water. He heads towards the round tower, where he is enveloped by a pleasant scent in the spatial set-up of Alchemy. Salt solution, sage herbal distillate and flint are being heated in a copper cauldron. He climbs the stairs to the first of the copper funnels on the balcony and pours the salty liquid from the lamp into it. This flows down the pipes into the cauldron and mixes with the fragrant mixture. With a spoon from a container in an alcove, he catches the herbal distillate and washes the bottle out with it. He pours the contents through another funnel and puts the bottle back in the lantern. He then takes a candle jar from the candle table and places it in the lantern to prepare it for a new cycle. He descends the stairs to the bottom of the castle tower, where he throws the flint stone that he has carried with him all along, into a large cauldron. When he leaves the round tower, he returns the lamp to the place where he borrowed it.

The exhibition ends on the top floor of the castle tower, under the wooden Renaissance roof, which creates an extraordinary ambience with its complex network of wooden beams. Here, the artist has set up the sculptural installation of Golden Birds. The viewer walks past them and the birds sway when touched. This concludes the tour.

Transitions Between Meanings

The course of the story is also dictated by the antipodes of light and darkness, between which man moves, touching and carrying raw materials to further the established process of energetic purification of the spaces and helping to build the meaning of the exhibition. Following the preconceived scenario, the viewer turns on light, transfers water and changes its state of aggregation, rounding off the artist’s creative process through his activity.

The artist establishes connections between the selected spaces. In the cellar, the visitor does not yet suspect that the installation of The Inner Sun is conceptually connected to the upper Seven Rays and that The Vortices of the Sava River below are connected to the Sea of Tears on the ground floor. Through these connections, the artist appeals to the resolution of the historical traumas of the spaces.

Finally, an old legend tells of two brothers, one of whom lived in the lower castle and the other in the upper one. In a fit of fear and envy, they shot each other with lethal bullets. This created, if only symbolically, a collective rift between the upper and lower castles (the world), which manifests itself to this day in the form of energy disturbances. The final connection is between the installations Alchemy and the Golden Bird, which promotes the revival of the dead river. The turbid water of the Sava from the lower course flows over the pebbles collected in the Sava Dolinka and the Sava Bohinjka, carrying the memory of the upper course, where the river was still clean.

Boštjan Kavčič’s work springs from an inner connection with the universe as a whole, “where everything is in dynamic balance, and it is also reflected in his way of life, which expresses a respect to all that exists, a responsible handling of material goods and a harmony with natural rhythms.” (Grmek, 2019). The artist’s view of the world is thus determined by his work, which appears at Rajhenburg Castle as a Gesamtkunstwerk that conveys a complex message with minimal means. The exhibition is not placed in the gallery area but respectfully grows into the architectural organism of the castle as if it were a part of it. For a short time, it creates a contemplative space that offers the viewer the opportunity to agree or disagree with the idea that man is part of the natural fabric and thus a companion to other beings. As a thinking subject, therefore, he bears responsibility for his actions.

Nina Sotelšek

In 2018, Tolmin Museum prepared an exhibition about the extraordinary archaeological wealth of Šentviška planota entitled Ancient Gods Become Silent. The exhibition in part also told an interesting story about the discovery and loss of the statuette of the goddess. She too met the same fate as other deities worshipped in the shrines of the pre-Christian period in the Posočje region. She became silent. She became silent because she was replaced by other cults. She also became silent because she was taken to Gorizia.

It is no coincidence that the artist Boštjan Kavčič was present at the opening of the archaeological exhibition at Tolmin Museum. Looking at the rich archaeological stories from Šentviška planota, he discovered to his surprise that the yet-to-be-named artwork he was working on was the figure of a female goddess holding the sun, the earth, the world, everything in her hand – a female goddess with the same shape and attributes as the lost goddess from the plateau.

The points of contact between the artist Kavčič, who lives between his home in Tolmin and his current place of residence in Bela krajina, and the archaeological history of the lost goddess brought us closer. A museum art project was launched to bring back the lost Isis.

On the ground floor of Tolmin Museum, there are 13 extraordinary works of art, colourful Posočje versions of Isis made of different materials (stone, bronze) – as Kavčič put it, each with its own feminine character and named with Latin names through which we feel their character. The artist has let Isis lead him wherever and however she wants. Together with the artworks, she has brought him back to Posočje, in symbolic and actual form. This is the story of the return of Isis from the Posočje region of Slovenia, who, after a visit to her homeland, is ready to return to her mythological origin in the Nile Basin.

Miha Mlinar

The Eternal Bearer of Life

In autumn 2018 I created a sculpture representing the female creative principle. I combined the elements of water and fire, and the result was the eternal bearer of life, the goddess with many names, the Great Mother, who gives everything and takes everything away. 

I encoded her in the noblest white marble of the Balkans, the beautiful Macedonian Sivec. The goddess wears a fiery crown on her head – a flint sphere from which sparks have been shooting since ancient times.

A month after the creation, I attended the opening of the exhibition at Tolmin Museum entitled Ancient Gods Become Silent. I recognised the Isis of Posočje in my work. "Oh, if only they knew how alive she is," I thought.

The goddess was awaiting her time. She waited two thousand years and more, and then a few more years until the exhibition was ripe. For twenty years I connected heaven and earth in stone organisms like the umbilical cords of the world. I strengthened the connection between above and below in the individual and in the wider space. The Goddess incarnated as the fruit of many years of experience, from inner vibrations and not merely from imitation of immediate formal nature. She is empowered by the use of precious marble and crystals. Her contours dance in harmony with the surroundings, her fullness and volume brimming with vital energy. Sovereign and peaceful, the Goddess carries the whole world on her head.

I give her to humanity at a time when a new world order is emerging, and we are experiencing crises in all areas. I fervently hope that reason will prevail and that the free will of the individual will be preserved as the basis of social coexistence.

It is a question of life!

Boštjan Kavčič

The Path of the Goddess of Many Names

I.

Ezra Pound, the poet who in many of his verses invokes the Goddess of Many Names, one of which is Isis, and who for many years pursued the idea of reinstalling a statue of the goddess Venus among the ruins of an ancient temple in Terracina, wrote the following in his Canto CXIII:

The Gods have not returned. "They have never left us." 

They have not returned.

The answer in inverted commas is the answer of Tradition. If it seems to us that the ancient, invisibly grounded world ruled by the Gods has disappeared with the advent of modernity, that is only the perspective of the people of the modern world, who are carried away by time, while the ancient, invisibly grounded world is eternal.

"Oh, if they only knew how alive she is," exclaims Boštjan Kavčič about the lost Posočje Isis.

If they only knew ... They do not know ... Therefore: "They have not returned."

For Ezra Pound dying is when we no longer make Gods out of beauty.

But how can we invoke the return of something that has been there all along? 

The Goddess is there, but she is no longer visible to people. Boštjan Kavčič is trying to make the Goddess visible again. 

Boštjan Kavčič combines his visualisation of the Goddess of Many Names with the symbolic return of a lost cult statuette.

In 1840, a small statue of Isis, 15 centimetres high, was found on the plateau of Šentviška planota in Slovenia. It was kept in Gorizia for a while, after which every trace of it was lost. 

And Boštjan Kavčič is trying to place his thirteen statues of the Goddess of Many Names into a relationship with this lost statuette, trying somehow to replace the lost figurine.

He is not trying to replace it by imitating its iconography in any way but is trying to bring back to consciousness the presence of the Goddess as he experienced her in the fusion of vision and mental construction, whilst contemplating the Pillars of Light and Faronika the Fish and with a consciousness of the ancient symbolism of the caduceus and the Egyptian ankh.

Her rounded spiral body bears at the top a fireball of the sun touching it with three points. Past, present, future ... The sculptor sees in it the union of fire and water and the flow of life energy that leads from chaos to order.

He is not simply concerned with creating an artefact, but with creating a genuine cult statue in our time. For him, this is not an allusion to the iconography of antiquity, but an attempt to truly revive the sacred energies. 

We can ask ourselves: can the making of a statue of the Goddess, of whom our times have no knowledge of how very much alive she is, be her real cult statue? Or is it all just a kind of "imitation"?

But what is authenticity anyway? Interestingly, we already encounter in our time a process that acts as an "imitation" of what seems to have been lost, in order to make us aware that it is not we, but the eternal knowledge to which we no longer have access, that has been lost. Take the Corpus Hermeticum, its treatise XVI, in which the god Asclepius speaks. In late antiquity, when a certain ancient knowledge seemed lost, an unknown author made contact with it by writing in his ancient Greek as if it were a translation of an ancient Egyptian text:

Expressed in the original, this dark language shows the clear sense of the words. For even the sounds, even the tone of these words of the Egyptians carry the energy of the things they say. Therefore, if it is possible for you, O King – and everything is possible for you – keep this language untranslated, lest such great mysteries come among the Greeks that the haughty language of the Greeks, cosmetically adorned as it were, does not destroy the majesty, the power and the energy of our names.

With these words written in Greek, the ancient Egyptian original emerges in the invisible, clear, untranslated, quietly piercing the darkness with its light.

When I hear Boštjan Kavčič talk about his work, I have the impression that he is trying to evoke such a presence with these statues of the Goddess. And it is no coincidence that he wants to bring Isis from Posočje back to Egypt – and from Egypt back to the Soča. 

A bold, ambitious plan. 

Will he succeed in evoking this presence?

II.

When Boštjan Kavčič talks about his sculpture, he always strikes me as someone who seeks contact with ancient sacred traditions in his art – not in the sense of imitating old forms, but with an extremely lively, seismographically sensitive perception of the spiritual events of today, which we can only really try to understand if we look for their hidden motions. 

Kavčič is a sculptor who revives the now completely neglected "classical" techniques of stone carving and the refined processing of bronze and other materials, but for him, sculptures are never just objects, they are always actions that awaken awareness of broader events in geographical space and the universe. 

It is no coincidence that as an artist he studied with two of the most interesting Slovenian artists: Marko Pogačnik, who was one of the pioneers of the neo-avant-garde in this field in the 1960s and the main initiator of the internationally significant movement OHO, who later developed a special way of sculpting "lithopuncture", healing of the earth (in the early 1990s he also wrote an extremely interesting essay on the return of the Goddess), and Dragan Živadinov, one of the most important artists of the so-called retro-avant-garde, who developed "cosmokinetic theatre".

For Kavčič, the essence of art is immaterial, spiritual. That is why, unlike most artists today, for whom contemporaneity is the only imperative, he strives to create something solid, lasting – and uses noble, durable materials to do so. Théophile Gautier writes in the poem Art, taken from his book Enamels and Cameos, about the statues that remain when cities crumble to dust. Boštjan Kavčič strives for such solidity in works of art – but he believes that such art can prevent the world from crumbling to dust. 

As he says himself, his work is about life and maintaining balance.

Just as the ancient legend of Faronika the Fish, which carries the world on its back, is about maintaining balance and the fish preventing the world from collapsing. This poem is a legend and also known from a Slovenian folk song that Ivan Pregelj, a Slovenian expressionist writer who lived not far from where the Posočje Isis was found, included in one of his novels. These were also the home places of Boštjan Kavčič, his genius loci.

The sculptor also connects Faronika the Fish with the symbolism of the snake; when I met him personally, he kept telling me about snakes and the legends associated with them.

Jewish tradition cursed the snake because the two people who followed its advice to attain divinity failed. Therefore, the serpent was associated with evil. The Hermetic tradition sees it differently and continues the heroic experiment. Boštjan Kavčič, who inserts the symbolism, the rods of Hermes, into the statues of the Goddess, says: "Saint George does not slay the dragon, but rides it." 

III.

The bodies of this Goddess are not only bodies; they are also landscapes. The sculptor has tried to encode esoteric geography into them – and has at the same time sent them on a journey himself.

The lost statuette of the Posočje Isis connects two distant landscapes. The Tolmin Mountains in Slovenia and Egypt. Two rivers, the Soča and the Nile. 

The fact that a statuette of Isis was found on Šentviška planota was completely unexpected, but still not so shocking, since the cult of Isis was widespread throughout the Roman Empire and such a figurine could be found practically anywhere. 

But the connection between these two regions is not accidental for Boštjan Kavčič. With his work, he tries to raise awareness of a mysterious connection hidden behind apparent coincidence.

The hills that stretch between Idrija and Bohinj are no ordinary hills. When we enter this space, we enter a magical realm that has its own temporality and its own distances that immeasurably exceed the distances we physically travel in this space. 

It is a place where, among other things, the oldest preserved musical instrument in the world was found – in a mysterious cave called Divje babe. 

These are places where pagan beliefs, the so-called ancient religions, have been preserved underground for centuries, even in the time of Christianity. 

The sculptor took me to these hills on the first full moon after the New Year. And it was a remarkable experience that I find difficult to put into words. Antonin Artaud once discovered the "mountains of signs" among the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico. These hills can also be experienced as the "mountains of signs". 

Boštjan Kavčič condenses these signs into the bodies of the Goddess. And when he sends these statues on a journey from the Soča to the Nile, only to return from there to the Soča, this is not something that has been invented. This is simply the path of the Goddess of Many Names. 

Miklavž Komelj

Even with independent projects in exhibition halls, which have often followed each other in recent years, Boštjan Kavčič always approaches the installation holistically, in dialogue with the space. This is a common characteristic of sculptors, who often understand their artwork as a 3-dimensional drawing in space, whereby Kavčič often focuses first on the space itself. He is not concerned with the beauty of the work of art in itself, he is concerned with the search for vitalistic expression, which he seeks in stone. This dictates to him how a certain line of the sculpture will be derived, because for him it is after all a search for an archetypal form. This is also why he often calls his sculptures Organisms.

The installations that Kavčič implemented in recent years first in the lapidary of the Božidar Jakac Gallery, then in the Krško gallery, which is located in the premises of the former church, and then in a similar space, the gallery of the church of St. Duha in Črnomlje, were ambient with a distinctly integrated approach, where, in addition to the sculptures, other elements were equally important, such as pebble stones instead of plinths and specific lighting. This installation in the gallery of Krka d.d. in Novi Mesto, due to the nature of the exhibition space and its purpose, it is of course completely different, more classically presented. And yet, the artist tries to pursue a dialogue with other elements and light, which is abundant here and will be very important for the relationship to the exhibited works, which are largely made of limestone. The works exhibited by Boštjan Kavčič in this exhibition are executed in a rather realistic manner, but both in form and title allude to strong symbolic meanings, usually based on contemplative questions about the existence of the universe, the role of deities and the place of man in all of this. Tolminska, where Kavčič comes from, is an area of ​​constant search for coexistence between man and nature, because nature there is harsh and relentless. Therefore, this area is rich in stories and legends that describe and search for these middle, moderate paths of coexistence, while also indicating deviations either to the dark side or to the light side of the edges that come along the way. Such is, for example, the Tale of the Golden Horn - the Golden Horn, where we come across archetypal images this time in the roles of the White Women, the snake guarding the treasure in Bogatin's cave, the Triglav flower, etc., subjects that we also encounter here in the exhibition area. Or the story from Podbrezje, the white snake with a crown, which is also on display here, and the snake is one of the most common mythological creatures around the world, which according to Jung is also a fundamental archetype because it reaches deep underground. It therefore creates the connection that the sculptor is looking for in stone. Not to mention Kavčič's frequent Troglav motif, a motif full of symbolic messages that illustrates, among other things, the well-known three-headed god in mythology, intertwined in three layers. These illustrate the three levels of the universe: the upper world, the middle world and the lower world. The mythical structure of Troglav or Triglav consists of the function of fire or lightning (Perun), water (Veles) and earth (Baba). Together they make up life energy. So they make up that vitalism that Boštjan Kavčič tries to coax out of stone in his characteristic full, voluminous forms.

Goran Milovanović

It is not surprising that the exhibition is conceived in a very personal manner, just as the ORGanism oeuvre has in itself emerged from the artist’s intimate life experiences and insights. The first factor that gave rise to the ORGanisms goes back to the artist’s childhood when he found a stone fossil shell on Razor mountain in the Julian Alps. In making this discovery, he intuitively realised that the (material) world has existed for a long time, almost from time immemorial, and that it used to be different from what it is now. Another significant factor was the artist’s teenage period, as he attended the high school of electrical engineering and played in a band at the same time, when he learnt that matter can be perceived as a form of energy and energy as waves. He experienced this during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana also in practice, when he learned in the workshops of Marko Pogačnik, one of the founding members of the OHO Group, how to use the body as an instrument for perceiving energy and in such a way cross the boundaries of the material world. The sensuous experience of bonding with the cosmos brought to him through the cooperation with Dragan Živadinov during the same period, which presented a great intellectual challenge, was on the other hand rationally structured and shaped into cognitive concepts by the artist. He perceived the time spent with these two totally juxtaposing personalities as two sides of the same experience, which he had previously merely had an inkling of, as confirmation on a personal level. The third factor that had an impact on the emergence of the ORGanisms was the artist’s trip to the USA where he found himself at the time of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and amid a state of emergency that prevailed thereafter. Through this experience, he realised that the world as we know it can change completely in an instant and that this change can also be fatal. This insight awakened a decision in him that one must make a conscious effort to strive for tolerance, peace and harmony in life.

All of the above involvements and experiences have influenced the fact that the artist has formed a specific, we could say wide-angle view of the world, which sees the universe as a whole, where everything is in dynamic balance. This is also reflected in his way of life, which expresses respect to all that exists, responsible handling of material goods and harmony with nature’s rhythms. This specific life philosophy and practice also defines his artwork and is revealed in the ORGanisms oeuvre of sculptures in its entire concreteness and at all levels, in the choice of material, in the concept and production of the sculptures, shaping of the forms and placement of the sculptures into the space.

The basic material from which the ORGanisms are made is stone, which is sometimes accompanied by wood or metal. Choosing stone as the basic material is based on the fact that stone contains all the history of life on earth, captured in the agglutinated, millennia-old layers of sediment. And it is this life that the artist tries to free through the creative process. The process of forming each ORGanism is essentially understood by the artist as “the uncovering of centuries”, where he is just “a small dusty particle in mighty space and time”. He perceives it as a kind of ritual through which he establishes a connection between himself and the universe, between micro and macrocosm. “We exchange glances with the stars under the open sky, dance our dance, and my hand travels in their rhythms”, he has written in one of his texts. He works the stone until “the organism takes its own breath”. This is therefore not a search for hidden forms, but the liberation of energy, the life force that is caught within it. This is also demonstrated by looking at the ORGanisms as a whole, which shows that they basically derive from only three shapes, circle, triangle, and less frequently, square, that expand into volume by following the principle of the curve, preferably into spirals and sometimes also into sinusoids, parabolas, flower wreaths or clovers. Volume is always formed by accentuating the axis, either by rotating the curve around its own axis, by an opening at the centre of the volume, or the axis indicating an outside element, such as a candle flame or a spurt of water/sand. With the principle of the curve and the pronounced axis, the artist dynamises the volume of the sculpture, while the sense of motion is further emphasised by the typical treatment of its surface, into which he draws incisions using a circular saw and a chisel that run from the common starting point, usually in the axis of the sculpture, towards its edges, outwards and downwards. The sculpture is complete once the artist feels that the energy flow has passed through it.

However, the process of creating an ORGanism is not yet complete, as the artist has yet to install the sculptures into the space, be it outside in nature, on the premises of a client/collector or in the gallery. This process is also a kind of ritual in which the artist tries to harmonise the micro and macrocosm, only that this time the focus is not on the connection between him and the universe, but between the sculpture and its environment. As he says himself, this process is basically to insert the sculpture into the space as if it has always been there, for it to act as an “ORGan in the body”. In doing so, he takes into account both the elements of the (gallery) space and the characteristics of the local environment, which are combined with the sculpture into a whole according to the principles of natural coexistence. It is only after it has been placed into the space that the sculpture comes to life as an ORGanism, as the “umbilical cord of the world”, which connects and maintains the natural balance, and this is sensed by the visitor as peace, consonance and harmony, imbued in the space of its residence.

When, a few years ago, the Slovenian Native Faith came to the fore as enumerated by Pavel Medvešček in his field research in the Posočje region, the artist discovered numerous parallels between his work and this tradition. It would be enticing to explore these connections, which the artist also illuminates by choosing titles such as Troglav, Deva and Devač, White Snake (with a crown) and Rusalka, in more detail, however, this must be renounced at this point due to a lack of space. It is nonetheless important to emphasise that the artist’s creative process and placement of the ORGanisms in the space, as well as the Slovenian Native Faith as far as we know it, overlap in joint efforts to respectfully deal with nature and its gifts, harmonise with the natural processes and rhythms, celebrate the circulation of life energy, and similar. The common starting point behind these endeavours is the awareness that man is not the crown of creation, but that he lives in this world in a mutual relationship with other beings and with a responsibility to maintain natural order and balance. This view, in today’s world, overwhelmed by the belief that technology and industrial production can replace nature, may appear to be obsolete, yet it is again becoming topical in view of the change in global climate, erosion of ecosystems, extinction of animals and plants, lack of clean water and mass piles of waste as the result of the advances in industry and technology. The awareness that human existence depends on nature is returning slowly but surely in one way or another. If man wants to survive, he will have to learn to coexist with nature, adjust to its rhythms and find his place within it.

Boštjan Kavčič believes that it is possible to coexist in the world in such a way, that a harmonious balance will be restored. It was nearly two decades ago that he decided to contribute to this as best as he can – by creating stone sculptures and placing these sculptures into the space – and he has established a rounded off ORGanism system within the entire Slovenian territory during this time. His ORGanisms take us back to where we have been and to where we will have to return if we want to survive. They help us understand who we really are.

Mojca Grmek

It is not surprising that the exhibition is conceived in a very personal manner, just as the ORGanism oeuvre has in itself emerged from the artist’s intimate life experiences and insights. The first factor that gave rise to the ORGanisms goes back to the artist’s childhood when he found a stone fossil shell on Razor mountain in the Julian Alps. In making this discovery, he intuitively realised that the (material) world has existed for a long time, almost from time immemorial, and that it used to be different from what it is now. Another significant factor was the artist’s teenage period, as he attended the high school of electrical engineering and played in a band at the same time, when he learnt that matter can be perceived as a form of energy and energy as waves. He experienced this during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana also in practice, when he learned in the workshops of Marko Pogačnik, one of the founding members of the OHO Group, how to use the body as an instrument for perceiving energy and in such a way cross the boundaries of the material world. The sensuous experience of bonding with the cosmos brought to him through the cooperation with Dragan Živadinov during the same period, which presented a great intellectual challenge, was on the other hand rationally structured and shaped into cognitive concepts by the artist. He perceived the time spent with these two totally juxtaposing personalities as two sides of the same experience, which he had previously merely had an inkling of, as confirmation on a personal level. The third factor that had an impact on the emergence of the ORGanisms was the artist’s trip to the USA where he found himself at the time of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and amid a state of emergency that prevailed thereafter. Through this experience, he realised that the world as we know it can change completely in an instant and that this change can also be fatal. This insight awakened a decision in him that one must make a conscious effort to strive for tolerance, peace and harmony in life.

All of the above involvements and experiences have influenced the fact that the artist has formed a specific, we could say wide-angle view of the world, which sees the universe as a whole, where everything is in dynamic balance. This is also reflected in his way of life, which expresses respect to all that exists, responsible handling of material goods and harmony with nature’s rhythms. This specific life philosophy and practice also defines his artwork and is revealed in the ORGanisms oeuvre of sculptures in its entire concreteness and at all levels, in the choice of material, in the concept and production of the sculptures, shaping of the forms and placement of the sculptures into the space.

The basic material from which the ORGanisms are made is stone, which is sometimes accompanied by wood or metal. Choosing stone as the basic material is based on the fact that stone contains all the history of life on earth, captured in the agglutinated, millennia-old layers of sediment. And it is this life that the artist tries to free through the creative process. The process of forming each ORGanism is essentially understood by the artist as “the uncovering of centuries”, where he is just “a small dusty particle in mighty space and time”. He perceives it as a kind of ritual through which he establishes a connection between himself and the universe, between micro and macrocosm. “We exchange glances with the stars under the open sky, dance our dance, and my hand travels in their rhythms”, he has written in one of his texts. He works the stone until “the organism takes its own breath”. This is therefore not a search for hidden forms, but the liberation of energy, the life force that is caught within it. This is also demonstrated by looking at the ORGanisms as a whole, which shows that they basically derive from only three shapes, circle, triangle, and less frequently, square, that expand into volume by following the principle of the curve, preferably into spirals and sometimes also into sinusoids, parabolas, flower wreaths or clovers. Volume is always formed by accentuating the axis, either by rotating the curve around its own axis, by an opening at the centre of the volume, or the axis indicating an outside element, such as a candle flame or a spurt of water/sand. With the principle of the curve and the pronounced axis, the artist dynamises the volume of the sculpture, while the sense of motion is further emphasised by the typical treatment of its surface, into which he draws incisions using a circular saw and a chisel that run from the common starting point, usually in the axis of the sculpture, towards its edges, outwards and downwards. The sculpture is complete once the artist feels that the energy flow has passed through it.

However, the process of creating an ORGanism is not yet complete, as the artist has yet to install the sculptures into the space, be it outside in nature, on the premises of a client/collector or in the gallery. This process is also a kind of ritual in which the artist tries to harmonise the micro and macrocosm, only that this time the focus is not on the connection between him and the universe, but between the sculpture and its environment. As he says himself, this process is basically to insert the sculpture into the space as if it has always been there, for it to act as an “ORGan in the body”. In doing so, he takes into account both the elements of the (gallery) space and the characteristics of the local environment, which are combined with the sculpture into a whole according to the principles of natural coexistence. It is only after it has been placed into the space that the sculpture comes to life as an ORGanism, as the “umbilical cord of the world”, which connects and maintains the natural balance, and this is sensed by the visitor as peace, consonance and harmony, imbued in the space of its residence.

When, a few years ago, the Slovenian Native Faith came to the fore as enumerated by Pavel Medvešček in his field research in the Posočje region, the artist discovered numerous parallels between his work and this tradition. It would be enticing to explore these connections, which the artist also illuminates by choosing titles such as Troglav, Deva and Devač, White Snake (with a crown) and Rusalka, in more detail, however, this must be renounced at this point due to a lack of space. It is nonetheless important to emphasise that the artist’s creative process and placement of the ORGanisms in the space, as well as the Slovenian Native Faith as far as we know it, overlap in joint efforts to respectfully deal with nature and its gifts, harmonise with the natural processes and rhythms, celebrate the circulation of life energy, and similar. The common starting point behind these endeavours is the awareness that man is not the crown of creation, but that he lives in this world in a mutual relationship with other beings and with a responsibility to maintain natural order and balance. This view, in today’s world, overwhelmed by the belief that technology and industrial production can replace nature, may appear to be obsolete, yet it is again becoming topical in view of the change in global climate, erosion of ecosystems, extinction of animals and plants, lack of clean water and mass piles of waste as the result of the advances in industry and technology. The awareness that human existence depends on nature is returning slowly but surely in one way or another. If man wants to survive, he will have to learn to coexist with nature, adjust to its rhythms and find his place within it.

Boštjan Kavčič believes that it is possible to coexist in the world in such a way, that a harmonious balance will be restored. It was nearly two decades ago that he decided to contribute to this as best as he can – by creating stone sculptures and placing these sculptures into the space – and he has established a rounded off ORGanism system within the entire Slovenian territory during this time. His ORGanisms take us back to where we have been and to where we will have to return if we want to survive. They help us understand who we really are.

Mojca Grmek

At first contact with Kavčič’s sculptures, they surprise us by the strong presence they inhabit in the space as well as the multi-layered nature expressed through their form. They are firmly fixed to the ground, yet they seem to be in motion. They are carved out of solid stone, yet they appear light. Kavčič’s attitude to material reflects his attitude towards the world and man’s place in it. He understands stone as the accumulation of earthly history, which prompts him to approach it with respect and treat it by listening to the inner impulses. The artist’s method of working with stone is not always the same, sometimes the sculpture arises as a flash, an idea on paper, then again, he may intuitively recognize a form in a found stone and proceeds to carve it until the substance begins to breathe. He peels off simple forms from the stone block, which have a characteristic furrowed surface in the form of winding, spiralling and circular lines.

The sculptures of Boštjan Kavčič remain open in terms of content, which means that their meaning is finally formed in the exhibition space. From the twelve sculptures, ten have already been exhibited at the Lapidarium of the Božidar Jakac Gallery in Kostanjevica na Krki, whereas two have been produced especially for this exhibition. In Kostanjevica, the sculptures were arranged in the courtyard, in front of the exhibition venue and in four spaces, where we could read the story of the four seasons on four interpretive islands, recognise the symbolism of the basic elements of life, or follow the artist’s suggestions, which were offered through the titles of the works, and interpret the exhibition with the help of an understanding of Old Slavic mythology. The exhibition in Krško expands on the theme of the changing seasons, stating that the Earth is fixed into the Universe, which also regulates the cycles on it. Contemporary man has theopportunity of discovering the Universe at the empirical and analytical level, whereas he is also capable of perceiving the Universe with the help of the senses and emotions. Ancient civilizations talked about cosmological processes without today’s knowledge and equipment. They relied on intuition, the senses and experiences gained by observing nature. With the discovery of the telescope, with every step deeper into space, it really has become more visible, while the boundaries of the invisible have also shifted at the same time. Between the Universe and the Earth, between empiricism and intuition, Kavčič’s sculptures are the light columns that the artist perceives at the emotional level. Looking into outer space, when thinking about its harmonious structure, gives him a sense of warmth and a feeling of purity and reassurance. The spiral notches on the surface of the sculptures represent the resonance of the movement of celestial bodies. But at the same time, they are also the means by which the artist achieves the effect of lightness, immateriality and rising towards the sky. Although his sculptures appear placid and have an ancient air to them, these are not archaeological relics of prehistoric times. Kavčič calls them the umbilical cords through which the Earth receives information on the ordered rhythms from the Universe.

The layout of the sculptures in the exhibi- tion space is a process that, in addition to the physical requirements, also demands great mental effort. Krško Gallery undoubtedly belongs to the more specific exhibition venues in Slovenia, since its rich architectural elements influence the final effect of the exhibition. The starting point for Kavčič’s thinking about the set-up is the totally white interior of the gallery and its heightened bouncy to- wards the heights. For the exhibition enti- tled Axis, the artist chose works that have a strong vertical orientation in their form and exemplify the cosmic axis mundi – the axis of the world, which represents the connection between Heaven and Earth, into which all li- ving beings are fixed. We read the exhibition as a narrative about the life cycle, the journey from creation to re-dematerialisation. As we enter the gallery, our gaze can encompass the entire set-up, yet the gaze is arrested by the stone in a carved shell-shape form containing water (ORG XXXVII – Deva, 2016). In silence, we can hear drops, even if we omit to notice the statue of phallic form, fixed onto the ceiling above us (ORG LX – Devač, 2017). The set-up that leads us into the exhibition illustrates the male and the female principles and can be read as an act of conception. In the central part of the gallery, the layout develops into a curve of sinusoidal shape. It starts with six sculptures, entitled Rusalke, slender, three-di- mensional curves that grow from a triangu- lar or rectangular ground plan. They rotate slightly from the ground to the tip and form the vertical axis of the sky-Earth. The rising towards the sky is enhanced in a spiral com-position from the lowest (ORG XXVII – Rusalka, 2016) to the highest (ORG XXVI – Rusalka, 2016), which measures three metres in height. Each subsequent one illustrates a higher level of human development from childhood to full maturity. The curve of the layout runs to- wards the ground petering out in the right apse, where there are three low sculptures, called Candlesticks. These carry candles, light, on their vertex, embodying the age when the human mind shines in the light of knowledge and wisdom, just as life is about to be extin- guished. The artist guides the viewer’s attention to the last statue in the exhibition (ORG XXXIX – Memento mori, 2016), set in the cen- tre of the former presbytery. On a wooden base, it rises upwards, from where it lets sand seep into a wooden bowl placed beneath. It is counting time and concluding a life cycle. It is aligned in the axis with the sculptures Deva and Devač, as well as the highest Rusalka, beginning a new cycle.

The exhibition is set at a time when the year is coming to a close, at a time of the winter solstice, a moment of pivotal energy change, as nature comes to a standstill and prepares for new beginnings. The contemplative ex- hibition also addresses us with the element of water that is offered to us with its purify- ing power. At the entrance we are stopped by the trickling water droplets contained in a rock pool. The pebbles, across which we take the winding path among the sculptures, have been carved over the millennia by the flow of the passing River Sava, which rolls slowly from here across Krško polje and fertilizes many fields on the way, makes cross- ings difficult and traverses borders before finally merging with the Danube. The exhibition offers a purifying rite of thought and spirit. It transforms Krško Gallery into a place of peace, contemplation and good thought, which are then taken to the south by the River Sava.

Nina Sotelšek

As we look back at the opus of Boštjan Kavčič we can see his multi-layered engagement in the field of contemporary sculpting concepts that include the fields of video, internet technology, robotics and whatnot, all of which are a result of the influence of popular culture through the prism of mass media, which is of course a legitimate l'esprit du temps. On the other hand his attitude to stone, if we are to believe Jung, is archetypical. His impulse to working stone is not conditioned by a classical sculpting approach or even by an eventual confrontation parallel to contemporary sculpting approaches, but is an expression of his personal attitude to the world and life within it – i.e. to the aforementioned process of self, which is basically a never-ending search for oneself. If we understand this as a learning process, we cannot omit the mention of the classic teacher-pupil dualism and the artist’s personal experience in the transfer of knowledge and skills. Boštjan Kavčič experienced such a moment with the famous Croatian sculptor Dušan Džamonja (also an old acquaintance of the Božidar Jakac Gallery), when he presented his first ORG I, 2002 in Vrsar, Croatia. He is still working on this series and our exhibition in Kostanjevica na Krki includes ORG XLIII, 2016. It might be easiest to summarise Kavčič’s artistic credo with the word oikos (οἶκος) which was used by the Ancient Greeks to denote the physical space of home and family (intimate space) with everything that belongs to them such as the garden, yard, outhouses (which is why oikos became a constituent part of the word economy, as well as the word ecology - both of which are connected to Kavčič). The artist has found his oikos in which his process of self takes place in Rodice, Bela Krajina. One of the reasons he chose this location can be found in the stone (some sculptures at the exhibition have been made from the stone from his estate), which of course differs from his childhood stones in the Coastal and Karst region. However, it is important to note, as we were already talking about archetypes, that our perception of the two spaces (oikos) and the ancient mythology that joins these spaces is much more similar.

This is why when you shake Boštjan Kavčič's hand – similar to many other sculptors – you know he works in stone. While working stone Kavčič shows great respect and responsibility for this holy material. With his deep concentration and highly visible sensuality he estab- lishes a dialogue with the stone, thus when we look at his works, we feel the hidden life energy of the stone. As the author once mentioned, he is not interested in the style, but in the prehistoric period, in which stones had a ritual importance, for he prefers to follow the organism within rather than the shape or form. He keeps taking away the material until the body starts to breathe. At a given moment the world’s axis emerges in the artist and his artwork. The reflection of creation is here and there simultaneously. The artist pays great attention to the positioning of his works into space, thus the interaction between the sculptures and space is not merely a visual effect, but the artist asks the viewer to approach the works in a wholesome manner, with an interior motive. Amongst Slovene sculptors this artistic philosophy is shared by Jiři Bezlaj, who has a similar theoretical base, which is why their expressive poetics intertwine.

Due to his meditative positioning of the sculptures into space this is always a special ritual which needs to capture the spirit of the space. The specifics of the exhibition space in the Lapidary of the Božidar Jakac Gallery, where several stone elements are already incorporated into the architecture, forced the artist to be especially collected while performing this task. This yielded truly exceptional results, which is why the artists entitled it O/de, an elevated song to the space. The artist deliberately connected the four entrances into a well thought out story, full of interactions and numerous associative attachments, which constantly cross the artist's thin line of the intuitive and rational field. The viewer can thus experience the wholesome experience of the artistic setting, which incor- porates the borders of the spaces, similar as he did in 1999 at the academy with the project Needle, in which he joined four studios at the academy into a single entity and received the student Prešeren's award for this.

Even though the artist sets the artistic element of the sculpture into the foreground, many will see signs for a symbolic interpreta- tion, which further determines the artist's holistic approach to sculpting and artworks. The view of the work ORG XXVI-Rusalka, 2016, as seen from the Forma viva park of sculptures through the main porch, addresses us with the pure organic forms characteristic of this artist. The pronounced verticality, which softly rotates along the axis into a tip, symbolises or- ganic growth and thus alludes upon movement and life. With this Kavčič leads the spectator to continue his view through the spaces back towards the exit, as appropriate for the symbolic construction of the layout. The dance of the water nymphs Rusalkas, which correspond to the Slovene legend of the nymphs called Čestitke, continues in one of the four rooms of the first space, rooms that are connected by ORG XXXIX-Memento Mori, 2016, which, as a reminder of our own mortality leads us further into the mythological world. Apart from the nymphs we can also see the sculpture ORG XXII-Three headed, 2013–2016, in mythology known three headed divine being that operates on the three levels of the universe: up- per world, middle world and underworld. The mythical three headed divine being is created from fire or lighting (Perun), water (Veles) and earth (Baba), and together they form the energy of life. As the final artwork in this space we come across the sculpture ORG XXXVIII- White snake, 2016. The snake is one of the most common mythological beings almost all around the world, and in the ancient tradition of our space a white snake represents a mysterious and extraordinary large holy animal that lived in the underworld. In exceptional circumstances it had the ability to change into an eagle. According to Jung the snake is also a basic archetype, for it reaches deep underground. Exceptionally subtle are the organic forms in the shape of spirals, which are reminiscent of snail shells. These are seemingly fragile and featherweight, but still carry the mass and structure of the stone. This is where Kavčič's extreme precision in his work and the conquered specialist knowledge become most visible. Due to his precise incisions we are given a deceptive feeling that we are deal- ing with an extremely soft material. These four structures allude at the universe as space and time already with their title ORG XL-Galaxy, 2016. There are many theories on time, but the artist believes the following: »time seems to be getting ever faster...«. The next space is filled by two natural stone sculptures, with an indentation at the top. At first glance their form is similar to the snail like forms in the neighbouring space, and it appears as if the universe was pulled out of them. The indentations are filled with water. Sound that simulates drops at certain intervals has been added to the space and this gives it a temporal component. There are also endless symbolic interpretations of water. One of the most common mythological interpretations of water is that it represents a border between the worlds of the living and the dead and that it represents a transition, cleansing. At this point I would like to quote Marija Makarovič from Orehovec, the closest village to our Gal- lery: »If you are in a dispute with somebody, you have to sprinkle holly water, for death smoothens everything out«. The title of his works ORG XXXVI-Deva, 2016 and ORG XXX- VII-Deva, 2016, show that Kavčič relied upon the ancient settlers from his place of birth. These settlers believed that a young girl became a deva under the supervision of vedrins through a complex initiation that took place in the water (two female waters come together at a location known as Devince). As we have already mentioned an eagle in this text, I will, at this point, turn to a Catholic allegory, which was recorded by Rudolf Wittkower in his book Allegory and the migration of symbols, 1977: »The Greek Physiologus, a collection of animal tales with Christian allegorisations probably brought together in Egypt in the 2nd century A.D., contains the following story about the eagle: When he grows old, his flight becomes heavy and his eyesight dim. He first seeks a pure spring of water, then flies aloft towards the sun, burns off his old feathers and the film over his eyes. Finally he flies down to the spring, dives into it three times, thereby renewing himself and becoming young again«. There are plenty of similar stories in different mythologies, and most stories interpret water as a division or transition between life and death. The last space of Kavčič's exhibition is also linked to death as a new beginning. He geometrically positioned four ORG sculptures into the room and named the work candlestick. He positioned four candles on the sculptures, and these candles shed the only light into the space and give it a special contemplative atmosphere. Fire and stone are of course good themes for mythology and beliefs. They remind us of Perun's temple around which eight fires used to burn. We could start a new chapter on the dualism of Perun and Veles and interpret everything from the beginning. Instead, let's go back and complete the circle. You can read more about this in the excellent book by Vitomir Belaj: Walk through the year, where you can also find Zeleni Jurij (Green George, according to Belaj, Perun's son) from the country from where Boštjan Kavčič originates.

Boštjan Kavčič stated: »The entire history is caught in stone, and this is why I am attracted to it. Every piece has its own story«. We have handed you a few stories in this text, but you can find many more once you visit the exhibition.

Goran Milovanović

After barely a decade, we have before us the mature personality of Kavčič – it could be said that it is stratified in its unique way, taking into account his evidentiary achievements – besides classical sculpture in stone – also in video, animated drawing, robotics and digital technologies. Diversification in the good sense of the word is the condition of today’s troubled times, overbrimming with transpositions and social networks, which one can no longer cope with, as one drowns in inevitable and absurd anonymity, in which only the spirit in its rebellious selfhood can survive.

Yes, the spirit, the artist’s awareness of form, which follows history in a myriad of manifestations through the millennia. And is the consciousness of form a kind of refuge to our sculptor, the quest for the refugium par excellence in the primordial, raw stone formation which resists him all the more he wants to penetrate into it?

Theoretician and a sculptor himself, Kosta Bogdanović prepared an exhibition entitled Zavest o obliki (The Consciousness of Form), in Belgrade’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 1988. In the introductory text for the catalogue he highlighted the initial letter ‘O’ (oblika = form) as a creative sign for rounded three-dimensional amorphous states, accidentally found and noted in nature: o(blo), o(blica) = rounded lump, cobblestone, o(blina) (oblo = round, oblica = round stick, oblina = roundness). He goes on to highlight the significance of the ‘O’ sign in the Greek for house (oikos), economy (oikonomia), ecumene (oikoumene), all this in terms of expanded access to space and towards the relations of man and people.

Who could be Kavčič’s spiritual role models, the like-minded individuals of his time? Where can the genius loci be found that resembles that of oneself, where could it live to be, reflect and be brought to that meditative point, at which only the rounded stone mass suffices and nothing more?

I delved far back myself – into self-inquiry and checking of my own memory to ...

– the Austrian quarry of St. Margarethen when I was on the trail of sculptor Janez Lenassi’s first encounters with a rock mass: in the middle of a foggy day, the obscured, dense atmosphere, a monolith emerged like a spirit – it shone with such invisible power that it prevented me from capturing it through the lens;

– the quarry in Carrara: the visit to the majestic marble hiding place, which invites to the very beginning, where Michelangelo decided on the dimensions of his pieces – and at the same time the encounter with the large-scale exhibition by Henry Moore in Florence. The concurrency of the existence of his rounded and pierced sculptures in a Renaissance urban space;

– Dubrava in Labin – with its scattered stone forms by various sculptors, the participants of Mediterranean symposia along the newly emerging White Road, formed with the sculptural language of symbolic mythical imagery.

It seems that we are on the trail of Kavčič’s current and future ORGies.

Aleksander Bassin

The sculptures of Boštjan Kavčič are imbued with the hidden energy of life. For him the material and its processing carry a basic message of profound insight. This completely haphazard and impulsive perception hides within itself the elusive experiences of the human essence. There is no place for every-day trivialities in the artist’s images. He indulges in the exploration of his inner motives.

Sculpture is a subjective medium which traverses between various disciplines and knowledge, between the rational, the physical and the sensual. At the beginning of his book “The Plague of Phantasms” Slavoj Žižek wrote that the material world is mostly the “un-hidden” reflection of the “subconscious outside”. In this same way the sculptor breaks through the membrane that divides our inner and outer perception of reality, which travels between the inside and outside worlds.

The “Organ” exhibition is composed of sculptures conveying the everlasting motif of the circle and the spiral, and these small organisms create an entity, the Organ. The first impression we get when seeing the ORGANisms is that the artist wanted to create simple, elementary and distinctly sensitive forms based on his own personal mythology. The sculptor manipulates the stone by hand and thus creates lines on its surface which enhance the skin of the organisms. He uses an angle grinder to cut into the stone and then manually chops off the stone splinters. Through this working process Boštjan Kavčič builds a respectful attitude towards nature which for him represents the basic understanding of space and time. On the other hand he creates a synthesis between nature and modern technology by using advanced technical means to work the stone.

Boštjan Kavčič also makes an impact on the observer’s perception by the deliberate arrangement of his stone sculptures which have been brought from the natural environment into the gallery space. The layout conforms to the specific qualities of the space which is no longer just a passive surrounding to an isolated object. It has now become an integral part of the whole design and a relationship has been established. The sculptures are no longer separated from the outside world (the gallery space) either in a physical or symbolic way. The organisms of sculptor Boštjan Kavčič strike us as harmonious entities of the Organ and create a unique contemplative atmosphere harking back to the primordial / primary which has been left forlorn and forgotten in our hectic and heartless society.

Jadranka Plut

The first impression we get when we come into contact with ORganizmi is the author's desire to create simple, elemental, highly sensitive forms that are based on his personal mythology. Some of the sculptures actually evoke memories of ancient fossil forms formed by nature, but we cannot say that the statues are completely devoid of socio-critical references. With a detailed analysis of the author's previous oeuvre - both his new media and video works as well as projects with an emphasized ecological note, such as Let's Garden! (2007), with which he encourages a sustainable way of life - we suspect that the primary impetus for the creation of the present sculptural series was a critical response to the modern information society, which has lost contact with nature. His sculptures emphasize handwork and the fundamental properties of the classical sculptural medium: the plasticity and materiality of the sculptural mass and the mastery of space in the narrower and broader sense of the word. The design and content of Kavčič's stone organisms are mainly related to two light motifs, the circle and the spiral. The circle represents (in most cases) the starting point of the formal design of his sculptures and seems to indicate above all the processes of dynamic transformation of natural forms. The spiral motif, which in the context of universal symbolism marks the connection with the unknown, transcendent part of human life, appears in the present cycle in various design variations. The spiral shapes act as a kind of analogies of archetypal symbols, which give the sculptural volume a special dynamism. The author further enhances the tactility of the sculptures with subtle hand or machine modeling of the surface structure, on which he seeks a balance between raw and polished parts. The processing of stone, which requires the sculptor's complete concentration, even fusion with natural materials, is understood as a process of in-depth of self-reflection, in which he wants to reach contact both with his inner self and with the wider one the macrocosm. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that in the design of statues he follows not only his vision, but also the latent life of natural matter, which the sculptor to certain dimensions "dictate" the shape itself. Among the mostly poetic, sensual ones organisms, we also find some statues with a clearly emphasized ironic tone. One such is ORG V (2005), a stone sculpture in the shape of a satellite dish, which is of course flat like the rest of the statues, it is carved in the classical sculptural manner and represents a kind of fusion natural substances and highly developed technologies. On the contrary, the Eye and Spirit work for us time (2005), consisting of a stone wheel and a triangular plinth - sort of primitive version of today's brake -, leads to the distant past, of course as you are we present it today. The sculpture, however, reveals another important feature of his creation: combining diametrically opposed forms (such as a circle and triangle or square), which evokes the combination of opposites in the sense of finding balance between the pairs heaven and earth, spirit and matter, transcendence and immanence, which we can also add the couple nature and technology, because after all they are also his organisms products of manual labor and machining. It is the line structure that it creates a machine, i.e. it gives its parts a recognizable stamp. It is worth mentioning a well-thought-out placement of the sculptures in the gallery space that the sculptors use is also necessary the installations are fully occupied. The effect of integrity is (usually) increased by spills fine natural material that not only acts as a binding element between individual statues, but also creates a kind of contemplative atmosphere in which the viewer can easily understand the author's message: returning to the primary, to the primordial from which life sprang. With his works, Kavčič reminds us not only of the importance of natural laws and history, which naturally represents the foundation of man technological and spiritual development, but also to the contradictions in today's chaotic and depersonalized society. He appears to the viewer as a creator who follows social, technological 2012 and cultural changes, but at the same time realizes that the globalized world has not it functions more as a coherent whole.

Nataša Kovšca

Boštjan Kavčič does not retreat from modern times, in fact, a quick review of his past projects reveals that the author realizes part of his creation precisely in the world of modern media, as he also deals with digital animation and uses modern virtual tools to construct his own ideas. But this very world, which attracts him on the one hand, also repels him in that other, disappearing world. The jump from virtual to direct contact with a bare, raw, natural material such as stone means to him a creative balance within which he can move optimally as a sculptor. His sculptural cycle ORG arose precisely from the context of this leap. In this case, the "back" jump. Kavčič tries to process the stone mostly by hand, because it is through interaction with it that he seeks an authentic bond with himself. A stone requires concentrated attention, unlike a virtual one, which scatters our attention. For him, stone processing is a religious ritual that occurs only during production, when the organism comes to life, this bond is lost. He uses archaic snail shapes that remind of fossils as well as all the accompanying scenography in which he places his pieces. However, he is not interested in fossils as such, but rather in the search for (lost) life in some extinct landscape where there is no trace of modern man. Hence all this search for balance and the flow of forces through the tension of the volume of the sculptures, all these holes, which are like transitions between material and nonmaterial. Kavčič understands his statues as a kind of models, which he would like to see one day also outdoors, in megalithic dimensions.

Kavčič understands sculpture as serious work! at the same time, he combines this seriousness with parody, even at the expense of the (non/meaning) of his own work, because where it is least expected, he dissolves poetics into irony. Namely, he also deals with the search for nonsense in our lives and with projecting them into artistic contexts. He especially likes to use the effect transfer principle verbal literalism into material as a metaphor for the paradoxes that rule our lives. thus, the combination of the shape of the wheel and the triangular "base - brake" The eye and the zeitgeist beneath it is a kind of metaphor for a magical jump to the time of the stone age - so hip that even the urban screeching of car brakes instantly dissolves into literal irony and petrifies, "back" into stone. It's like being in the land of the cult cartoon "The Flintstones". thus his statues, which in their classicity look like a miracle in our time, precisely because of the exposure of the almost already dead sculptural language, seem so attractively alien in all their seriousness. Parody is that sculptural dessert that unexpectedly but gratefully "disrupts" their unobtrusive silent presence.

The effect of paradox and mixing of contexts gives Kavčič's sculpture, which smells of the principles of moderate modernism, a postmodern character due to the placement of all these stone pieces in a constructed, spatial scenography. The latter establishes a sense of territory with situations that build the story. With this, Kavčič's sculpture opens up to the modern viewer and enables a traditional statue to communicate with the environment in a fresh way. For a long time, the statue is no longer just a monolithic piece of material that constantly oscillates somewhere between abstraction and figural. When, at the end of the 1970s, the then generation of Slovenian sculptors (Vodopivec, Sambolec...) threw away the ossified, traditional academic principles, new dimensions opened up for Slovenian sculpture, taking it out of the armor of modernism. The sculpture moves into the field of other media, expands into space and into the context of everyday life, sculptural work is questioned, parody, irony is allowed, modernist and all other past artistic experiences are recycled, etc. Today, on the basis of these experiences, new sculptural worlds can be created, hybrid and/or pure again, such as Kavčič's ORG-anisms, whose parallels can also be found in undefined, almost surreal organic forms from forgotten worlds, for example in sculptors like are Kracina and Frlic. Otherwise, the author's organisms, as he himself says, are mainly spread somewhere between the Stone Age and models of today's unrealized intelligent genetic organisms. Kavčič thus touches the prehistoric world from the time of Stonehenge with one hand in order to achieve the most possible simplicity, naturalness and therefore timelessness and thus make the statues as markers of this forgotten landscape, to which the modernists (Brancusi, Moore) have already resorted. groping and beating the signals of hectic urban life back into the meditative strokes of the chisel against the stone. With the other hand, he touches the stone through the machine, because he realizes that without Tesla's invention of the AC motor and other later inventions, many things today would not be possible. neither do the lines that layer the surface of the author's organisms, as they are in fact the traces of the diamond blades of an angle grinder. The author consciously accepts his era and everything that comes with it. thus he does not run away to one or another time, surrounded by the experiences of both, he wants to get closer to himself and to the origin of life through sculpting.

Barbara Sterle Vurnik