Jure Kastelic "Esc"

About

Jure Kastelic: Esc

Dates: 19-28 February 2021

Opening on Friday 19 February, 12:00-21:00

Address: Calle el Drago 62, Santiago del Teide, Tenerife, Canaries

Exhibition organised by Mare Karina

Mare Karina is a project by Marta Barina and Jure Kastelic. Barina’s experience includes curating and working in sales and artists management for commercial art galleries in London and international artists studios. Kastelic is an artist working with painting, drawing, AI programs, self-publishing, cryptocurrencies and public talks; previous experiences include managing Fotopub Festival in Slovenia. Esc is their first exhibition as a collective.

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Jure Kastelic moved to Santiago del Teide, Tenerife after the lockdown extension in London was announced last December. For this exhibition of new works made on the Spanish island, Kastelic has drawn on recurring Bitcoin mythology subjects alongside newfound motives and palettes.

Born in Slovenia just after Yugoslavia broke apart, Kastelic was taught the importance of achieving economic stability and independence from a young age. His research is centered around the unsexy side of money like its origin, issuance, governance and the seemingly related rising inequality, declining purchasing power and the universally fictional trickle-down-economy: “I’m fascinated by how value’s derived from scarcity while observing the parallels of moneyness and painting”.

While in London, the frugality of his art practice was primarily shaped by necessity but grew into an efficiency game affecting the choice of the materials and techniques, the working space, and the relationships with galleries and collectors. For example by using an algorithm which rapidly generates sketches for the works, or cutting out middlemen by offering 50% bitcoin cashback to buyers going directly to him, all while using this same non-inflationary currency as the base of his practice. 

Today, enhanced by the alluring backdrop of Tenerife, Kastelic art practice reflects his first-hand experience as an artist leveraging Bitcoin, and his ongoing research on the impact this new technology has in the new economic reality as a means for escape. Through paintings and works on paper, often accompanied with self published books and public talks, Kastelic hopes to propagate a basic questioning of the established money system and suggests a working strategy of opting out.