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daSein Asks | Enej Gala

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Enej Gala

Born in 1990, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Enej Gala lives and works between London, Venice and Nova Gorica. In 2013, he accomplished his B.A. and in 2015 his M.A. in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, in the meantime he exchanged at the William De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2014. Graduated from Royal Academy Schools Postgraduate Programme in London 2019-2023. Gala's practice is based on an acute awareness of thinking through making and attempting to grasp the experience of otherness. Puppetry is used as a lens to focus on materials as entities, expanding their potential by exposing and building on their intrinsic qualities. This process questions traditional perspectives on art, craftsmanship, installation, performance and different forms of production.

Recent solo exhibitions include: The invention of footsteps, Almanac, Turin (2023); Saving chewing gums from mammoth's hair, TJ Boulting, London (2023) and 'Nevereverevereverevereverever learn', Aplusa gallery, Venice (2022). Group exhibitions include 'Lapsus Calami', Marlborough gallery, London (2023-24); H?tel-Dieu, Aplusa Gallery, Venice (2023); 'It's the sea gone with the sun', ALMANAC Iceland rd, London (2023); 'Melt', Euston Road, London (2023); Fondazione Malutta in Spazio, Spazio Contemporanea, Brescia, (2023); 'Fever Dream', Galerija MK, Zagreb (2023); 'Les guerriers, les loups et l'enfant', Moonens Foundation, Bruxelles (2023); RA Degree Show, RAS Postgraduate Program, Royal Academy, London, (2023); 'Camminando sul ciglio di un instante', Shaelyn Hanes, Eunice Tsang, YCRP FSRR Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (2022); 'Who killed Bamby?, Dolomiti Contemporanee, Nuovo Spazio di Casso,Casso (2022); 'Surreal and the real', debut exhibition by W.H.Y. Art Gallery Hong Kong, China (2022); 'Ghostly like traces', Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London (2022). Gala was the winner of Xenia residency award, Bow Arts Alcamantar RAW studio award, Wolfson College Cambridge RAS Graduate Prize andGilbert Bayes Scholarship Award – for sculpture 2023.

Objective Objects installation view

Q - Gallery daSein

A - Enej Gala

Q : What inspired you to begin making the series ‘Neighbour’s Harvest’? Could you describe the meaning of this title?

A : The work was made for my Degree show at Royal Academy Schools at first as a kind of tongue in cheek response to my peers. We were studio neighbours during our studies. The title refers to the fact that I used the sawdust from the workshops where everyone worked. I harvested the detritus from their works and literally made it into my work. Remnants of other bodies became the bodies of sculptures hanging and depending on each other to form another organic neighbouring community. At once it is also an introspection that refers to my growing up at the border between Slovenia and Italy and the many neighbouring issues my country dealt with in its relatively brief history.

Neighbour's Harvest, RA Degree Show, 2023

Q : What led you to your considerable exploration within the themes of puppetry and marionettes?

A : Puppetry is of significant importance in Slovenia. It played an important role in my childhood and many others. There are two national theatres dedicated exclusively to puppetry and a national museum at the Ljubljana’s castle dedicated to its history and development. My grandfather, who comes from a line of woodworkers, was born in the same little village (Solkan) as our first officially acclaimed ''father of puppetry'' Milan Klemen?i?. When I first collaborated on a scenography for the puppet show called White Camel directed by Nika Bezeljak at Puppet Theatre Maribor in 2017 I was hooked. I realised how embedded it was in my perception of making art, and everything I did until then somehow changed and acquired a deeper sense through the lens of puppetry.

Milan Klemen?i?, Doctor Faustus, 1938

? Ljubljana Puppet Theatre

Nika Bezeljak, White Camel, 2017

? Maribor Puppet Theatre

Neighbour's Harvest

sawdust, wire, PVA glue, 81 x 36 x 23 cm, 2023

Q : What motivated you to use sawdust as a material? How is this material distinct from other materials you have used before?

A : I feel like I’ve been searching for a material that would permit me to make sculptural forms with an ease similar to a drawing since I first started to create objects. I used wax, clay or fabrics and polyurethane quite extensively to acquire this sense of immediacy, but came across sawdust in the puppet production where they use it for masks, props or puppets in a myriad of ways. It is a poor material, but very sturdy and dries reasonably quickly. I like that it is directly linked to puppetry and woodworking which brings a sense of an ongoing tradition.

Repaired Objects, mixed media on broken objects, 2018

Acquaintance, mixed media marionette, 2020

Neighbour's Harvest

sawdust, wire, PVA glue, 154 x 27 x 16 cm, 2023

Q : In this series of work you have created various individual characters, is there a narrative behind each figure? What are the relationships between each of the figures?

A : The figures are inspired by puppetry as a kind of half made mechanisms, puppets, limbs or other unidentified structures that grew as an intent to research the material itself and its possible functionality. It is almost as if they never reached a mature stage though, they are in a limbo between the idea and its execution. The process, to my mind, is quite similar to free improvisation, a process that thrives on failure, vulnerability and unpredictability. They are neighbours to each other sustaining their weight and equilibrium to form a bigger structure or community. The structure itself becomes like a good neighbour respectfully taking over the space, enhancing its properties by adding its own distinctive character.

Q : Why are some of the figures in this series fairly anthropomorphic while others are rather abstract? The figures you create are also typically long, thin and spiked, what is the inspiration behind these ambiguous forms?

A : I guess it's just the nature of the material that narrates the way I use it. Boiling down the ingredients to a minimalist approach for a maximalist result. I like the forms to escape definitions by not really falling into usual dualities between abstract and figurative, organic or mechanical, animate or inanimate nature etc. I guess the abstract is just a perspective that can never be truly reached. Our brains are wired to search for similarities and figures that resemble real objects even in the most abstract (un)natural forms. So I like to play with this. To appear fragile even if they are fairly sturdy becomes a kind of natural deception or camouflage. I think at their best a kind of prehistoric and futuristic aesthetics unpredictably meet and form a parallel timeless quality. It is very satisfying when the material and the message coincide in an equilibrium that oddly makes the work more than just the sum of its parts.

Neighbour's Harvest

sawdust, wire, PVA glue, 67 x 46 x 13 cm, 2023

Neighbour's Harvest

sawdust, wire, PVA glue, 63 x 64 x 37 cm, 2023

Q : A lot of your works are presented in the form of a group or an assembly, what is the intention behind this? Does a work’s context change if a figure is displayed individually or in a group?

A : In a group they function as a community of neighbours while as individuals they become just singular neighbours. The distance between them allows space to come in and participate in the installation. I noticed the space becomes enhanced and exposed whenever they arrive. Suddenly everything that is not ''them'' becomes almost as awkward as they are. One starts to notice the ceiling, the floor, the windows, plugs, walls, a dead fly in the corner or whatever there is in the surroundings, so the surroundings become active participants, like an animated scenography in a play.

Neighbour's Harvest, RA Degree Show, 2023

Neighbour's Harvest

sawdust, wire, PVA glue, 164 x 56 x 27 cm, 2023

Q : How were your learning experiences at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts compared to those at the RA Schools? Were there any particular dissimilarities?

A : Of course it was quite a different experience. Firstly, the different nature of studies in Venice I did the BA and MA which are just not the same as a Postgraduate programme and the one in RA is on a completely another level even to comparable schools. I definitely learned to paint and acquired a particular sensibility to material and narration in Venice that I don't believe I would have gotten from RA. But in RA a broader critically engaged thinking towards different works and other practices made a significant change in my perception of what could be considered my practice. The tutors and all the facilities in RA were amazing, we couldn't even dream of this in Venice at the time. But Venice taught me dedication and belief in the unknown qualities of the materials and narratives that can emerge from them. I think both were crucial for my understanding of what I do today.

Q : It is written in your bio that your practice is “based on an acute awareness of thinking through making, attempting to grasp the experience of otherness.” Could you elaborate on this making process and the concept of “the experience of otherness” ?

Thinking through making means that there is no obvious hierarchy between the idea and its execution. Sometimes I do something and understand it later, other times it is the opposite. Making directly informs and helps thinking. Thinking through objects or materials is what makes sculpture possible. It is a kind of literal concrete poetry. Don't get me wrong, ideas often precede making, but they also emerge from it. They are both happening simultaneously which could appear less rational and more intuitive to a certain extent.

I think we are all familiar with ''the experience of otherness''. It is paradoxically everything that goes beyond one's familiarity. Encounters, objects, things, people, cultures, places, methods, ways of doing and seeing things … These can all be familiar or unfamiliar to the observer or maker. It is usually a metaphysical distance that puts the observer in perspective towards the observed. Trying to define this distance makes ''the experience of otherness'' less painful or familiar. I like to play with this familiar/unfamiliar notion of things/materials as it creates new connections between what we see and what we understand. A good narration is often built upon an ''unfamiliar familiarity''. It's a kind of law of perception - the way our logical thinking drives us into conclusions and expectations.

Enej Gala working in the studio

? Cat Garcia

Q : Which artists do you admire? Are your works influenced by any artists?

A : There are many artists I admire but most of all I think I got influenced by my life’s experiences, that is peers and people I have met on the way. Fondazione Malutta is always a great font of inspiration - an artist collective (I am also part of) of over 50 people that all more or less met at one point in Venice. All my tutors and peers from RA were a nice influence as well. I guess every time I meet a collaborator/artist some kind of influence/exchange inevitably happens. Today one is easily immersed in the stream of artists through different social media or online research. I often find myself ruminating over people like David Hammons, Liz Magor, Slavs & Tatars, Mike Kelley, Fischli & Weiss … I remember the Slovenian artist France Miheli? as probably the first that made me think of art as something with genuine purpose.

Liz Magor, Delivery (red), 2018

? Catriona Jeffries

Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Equilibre (series), 1984

? Spru?th Magers

France Miheli?, Carnivals,1970

? National Gallery of Art, Washington

Q : What do you like to do other than making art?

A : I love long hikes, but I definitely don't do them as often as I’d like to. I also play the clarinet/bass clarinet and am very much into improvised music.

Q : What are some of your favourite films and/or literature?

A : I like old movies with analog special effects and clever intense stories, but overall I am quite eclectic. A few directors that come to mind: Gieorgij Danelija, Jan ?vankmajer, Terry Gilliam, Jim Hanson, Gy?rgy Pálfi …

I am an avid Sci-fi reader. I think good Science fiction holds all the literary genres in one read. In this sense my all time favourite writer is probably Octavia E. Butler. But there are many reads I keep returning to for inspiration. Liu Cixin’s Three body problem is a great trilogy that left some lovely scars in my interpretation of the universe. Viljevo by Luka Bakavac, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon are a few that come to mind frequently. I absolutely love the international literary group Oulipo from which Atlas Inutilis by Herve Le Tellier is a kind of recurring read. I do like to alternate fiction with essays, psychology, philosophy and history books. Some of such latest reads have been by Lauren Berlant, Byung Chul-Han, Val Wilmer, Slavoj ?i?ek, Judith Butler, Stephen Jay Gould, Barbara Ehrenreich, Oliver Sacks … I do read multiple books simultaneously and jump from one read to the next quite frantically especially in London as public transport offers so much time for reading. I also like to listen to audiobooks while working on longer technical aspects of my work.