Personal data:
First name: Tomaž
Family name: Tomažin
Date of place and birth: 1971, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Professional arts field / specialty: Visual Arts/Sculpture and Media Arts
E-mail: t.tomazin@gmail.com
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I finished MFA in sculpture and new media in Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana in 2004. I participated in many group shows at home and abroad.
Selected group shows are Moscow Biennial: Situations – Solyanka Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2009; Slovene Video Art after 2000, Ganes Pratt , Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2008; Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2009; ;“Bulgaria? . . . Oh, Yes, Bucharest!”, Contemporary Art Week, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 2007, Slovene Art 1995–2005: Territories, Identities, Nets, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 2005.
My recent solo shows are: Situations, Maribor Slovenia, 2010 Who’s there? It’s Me!, Ljubljana, Slovenia,2008; From the top of my head, Likovni salon Celje, Slovenia, 2007; Multipurpose, Gallery A+A, Venice, 2006, I live and work in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
I am using my own image in my artworks since 2000, when I have started my MFA. I started with usurping the film roles like the character Mr.Tornhill in Hitchock’s North by Northwest. I then “re-enact” all the selected roles in front of a green screen and using a computer to insert my own head into these roles. What interests me is the separation between subject and object, and between the head and the body. By usurping the identity of the main character I raise questions about my own identity. As for the viewer, even as he views the video (or photography) work, he finds himself in the body of the actor. The point of this visual manipulation, its main idea, is to create a reflection. Just as I do myself, so the viewer, too, is compelled again and again to ask himself questions about his own identity
My intention is to create psychological discourse in photographs between protagonists and location, overcoming the stereotypes and constructing new meanings. Behind every photography is hidden narrative which comes on a surface unexpectedly. Multiplication of myself throughout the image brings sometimes uncanny feeling, or surprise, but mostly results in a hidden humor.