Pod rdečo zvezdo/Under the Red Star

Iztok Sitar: “Under the Red Star”
Survey exhibition of engaged comics

Reality knows no tranquility. A work of art either moves toward presenting reality or away from it in order to forge its own parallel reality: like any visual work of art, the comic lies within these principles of presenting any reality. In a comic, the picture becomes independent, jumping from one cartoon to the next; the word becomes independent, jumping from sentence to sentence, occasionally overflowing to overwhelm the visual aspect, while sometimes the visual aspect overwhelms the word.

Iztok Sitar (1962) aka Ninel (this is an anagram, which can be read backwards) is among the most significant comic book artists in Slovenia. His body of work is extensive, and most series or cycles have been published in books. He has also published in many national and foreign magazines and newspapers. The retrospective at the City Art Gallery of Ljubljana (MGML), which presents his extensive body of comics, is the most thorough overview of his thirty-five year career and includes a selection of eight books that embody Sitar’s personal and visually and verbally expressive maturity, which he has worked for persistently, thoroughly and patiently since his artistic beginnings.