Painter, printmaker and musician Sašo Vrabič has printed an extensive series of prints entitled New Plate in the MGLC Print Studio. This conceptually conceived series unites the artist’s interest for imaginative creating and interweaving of pictorial language, sonic/musical expression and visual poetry. All of this is reflected in the witty titles of the prints, fleeting thoughts and selected words through which he quite literally draws and paints his images. Through its title, New Plate, the series handily evokes an association between the good old vinyl record and the graphic matrix, often also known as a printing plate. The entire series of prints is produced on 31 x 31 cm paper, matching the size of a record sleeve, which has long been regarded as the carrier of the visual message accompanying recorded music. An intriguing starting point is Vrabič’s decision to recycle old prints, cut them into a new format and print new images on them. The prints complement each other in much the same way as new music samples are created from old songs.

Many of the images were created in the MGLC Print Studio. The entire series comprises 159 graphic prints, produced in the screenprinting technique. Twelve of these are printed in black on white paper as an indivisible whole, and can be interpreted as a print portfolio or, in the context of a new plate, even a visual album. The titles of the individual prints in this album inspired Vrabič to prepare and compose 12 more original songs with recordings from his home studio, sounds from the MGLC Print Studio and audio material from certain public spaces, such as the railway station in Ljubljana. He skilfully arranged the compositions and devised the listening order on sides A and B of his first solo vinyl record entitled New Plate, which was released in a limited edition of 55 copies to accompany the exhibition.

The concept and layout of the exhibition stem from Vrabič’s wish to interweave the creative possibilities and narrative starting points of different mediums, and is divided into two spaces, similarly to how a record is arranged into Side A and Side B. The exhibition begins with a video showing a spinning record. The sound unobtrusively fills the space and accompanies us throughout our viewing of the series of monochrome prints from the print portfolio. Upon entering the second space, we f irst catch sight of a video showing the other side of his record. The music in the second space also accompanies the viewing of a series of graphic variations, whose basic images are derived from the aforementioned images in the print portfolio. Vrabič accompanied the visual interpretation of the second side of the album by conceiving the gallery space as a unified whole, covering its walls with drawn and painted motifs that we can find as the base in his series of graphic variations and at the same time constitute a new interpretation of the compositions in formal, painterly and drawing terms.

New Plate is a conceptually conceived project, bringing together printmaking in a print studio, the creation and release of a music album and an exhibition. It developed and evolved organically, but thoughtfully and gradually. The printmaking process inspired the musical composition and album release, while the images and sound served as the starting point for setting up the exhibition. It is important to note that no element of the project ultimately prevailed or became more important than any other. With assurance and parity, Vrabič brings all the elements together into a whole, ensuring that music is not merely a sonic accompaniment and printmaking is not merely an illustration on the cover, but positioning them as two equivalent mediums where structure, rhythm, layering and repetition play a significant role. The exhibition New Plate allows the listener to observe and see sound, while enabling the viewer to hear the graphic prints. Twelve screenprints, united in an indivisible print portfolio, and twelve instrumental compositions, released as a music album, form two equivalent materialisations of the same artistic idea. Consequently, the print portfolio and the music album do not illustrate or accompany each other, but function as visual and audio records of an identical structure, in which the title, format and sequence take on the role of a shared connecting language.

Curator of the exhibition: Božidar Zrinski