TOMAŽ FURLAN : Flop
City of Light – permanent installation
Foersterjev vrt, Ljubljana
opening: 23. September 2026 at 20.00

In addition to the annual Svetlobna gverila festival, through the “City of Light” project we set up long-term outdoor light objects, installations, and ambient lighting. Three are currently on display at the Lighting park, also known as Gradaščica Park (artists: Boštjan Drinovec, Aleksandra Stratimirović, Meta Grgurevič & Jaša), one at AKC Metelkova mesto (Lina Rica), and one in the pavilion at UKC (Nika Erjavec).

This time, however, the new installation will be in Foerster’s Garden, where we plan for it to remain active for at least five years. Flop created by Tomaž Furlan is an ironic monument to the utilitarianism of modern times. It is a monument to a multifunctional accessory, intended for spending quality time in the first and most difficult hours of a young person’s first experience of a big city. It is a temporary concrete monument, cast in life-size on the model of a mattress, curved into a semicircle, where the viewer can sit down. The object has its own integrated light, which allows reading books and other activities at night. According to the artist, the public monument demonstrates an accessory that allows the rationalisation of mobility, saves unnecessary costs and has a significant impact on the productivity of the individual: ‘In the future, any young person who arrives in the city with high moral standards of peace and democracy, the highest quality work ethic and a boundless desire to contribute to society could receive the state support depicted in the concrete sculpture at the start of their journey.’

TOMAŽ FURLAN works in the fields of sculpture and intermedia art; he has exhibited in major group and solo exhibitions both in Slovenia and abroad, and is also an author of several works in the public space. His works are mostly socially critical satirical commentaries on the present, which allow a glimpse into the future. In a humorous and (auto)ironic way, he questions the position of the individual in neoliberal society and the embeddedness of the worker in the repetitiveness of everyday life and meaning-full(/-less) work processes. One of the characteristics of his work is also their interactivity or possibility of use, which transforms the viewer from a passive observer into an active participant.