Evgen Bavčar is a conceptual artist whose photography is based on darkness, not on light.
'I remember Zoran Mušič, who lived in Paris for a long time, and I often had the opportunity to talk to him about the light of Gorizia and its surroundings', writes Evgen Bavčar, who lost his sight at the age of 10. 'Thanks to this light and his works, he managed to pierce through the darkness of the 20th century when he painted the horrors of concentration camps, as in the series 'We Are Not the Last'. I am proud to have met him in Paris and to have been able to tell him that I, too, once saw the same light, the same visual phenomena related to the landscape, especially in Brda, on the outskirts of Gorizia or on the Karst plateau.'
Evgen Bavčar obtained a PhD in Philosophy and Aesthetics from the Sorbonne in Paris. He was awarded the title of honorary doctorate at the University of Nova Gorica and the Institute of Critical Studies of Mexico, and he was the director and founder of the Laboratory for the Invisible in Mexico City. He received the highest French honor with the appointment as Knight of the Legion of Honor, the recognition of European Citizen from the European Parliament, and the Order of Merit from the Republic of Slovenia. He lives between his hometown, Lokavec, near Ajdovščina, and Paris.
His photography is based on darkness, not on light. Darkness illuminated with a flashlight, until achieving a kind of 'expression'. As he himself states, he is a conceptual artist and not a photographer in the strict sense because he has never looked through the lens of a camera. For him, the image must first exist in his consciousness, and only then he tries to realize it: this is his way of saying that even the blind have the right to the image.
Every person who thinks, thinks in images, and this also applies to the blind. He likes to talk about artistic images, and he knows several through their descriptions. He talks about Mušič, Pilon, Černigoj, artists who conveyed a sense of European belonging and whom he would have liked to participate in the Capital of Culture.
He would like to touch the hands painted by Veno Pilon. Just as he once touched the Venus Callipyge in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
