Inside the sunspot Painting

Iztok Šostarec was born on 5th of August, 1960, in Ljubljana. He attended a School of Design, Department Industrial Design, and studied Fashion Design. He works as a costume and make-up designer in Slovene and foreign theatres, as a stylist in advertisement shooting. In Croatia he created collections of fashion accessories for fashion houses, he designs decorative elements for interiors. It is characteristic for Iztok Šostarec that, irrespective of means of expressing himself, be it painting, sculpture or fashion, he unites techniques and creates new ones in extraordinary combinations. Paper, textile, metal or wood are tested separately or together, they are kneaded in a creative manner und subsequently transformed into a work of art, in which the original materials get completely new dimensions, and the work in question an unexpected polysemantic force of expression. Several times he has been awarded by the Municipality of Ljubljana for best display window in the town centre. His displays are not a mere decoration, they resemble an exhibition, a theatre, the elements of which are telling a story, they seem to liven up right away, change their position and start telling another story. In recent years, he has been engaged in installations projects within festivals, using unusual natural and artificial spaces, like fish farm, dried riverbed, glacial boulders rising out of a rushing river. Installation elements are not made in the studio only, but increasingly in workrooms, industrial plants, factories.