Janez Korošin: The Decline of the Agglomeration

Exhibition curator: Nuša Podgornik

Janez Korošin (1935), recipient of numerous national and international awards – most notably the Janez Puhar Award for lifetime achievement in photography (1996) – has participated in several Slovenian and international group exhibitions and held numerous solo exhibitions. To mark his 80th birthday, Cankarjev dom presented a retrospective exhibition of his black-and-white photographs in 2015. In January 2026, Small Gallery will host an exhibition of colour and black-and-white photographs from the artist’s series The Decline of the Agglomeration – Jesenice Ironworks. While the black-and-white photographs prominently evoke Vanitas – the iconographic motif reminding viewers of the transience of life and the futility of earthly pleasures – the colour photographs carry more optimistic connotations, transforming destruction into reconstruction and metamorphosis, and investing the motifs with a different perception and undertone. Despite the decline of the agglomeration, the works also convey the resilience and continual renewal of life.