Karas Gallery

Praška 4

Rosana Ratkovčić, Fedor Kritovac: CRAFTS SPECTACLE

Collaborators: Morana Biljaković, Tom Jantol, Davor Vrcelj

10. - 30. 6. 2009.

Exhibition opening: June 10, 2009 at 8 pm.

CRAFTS SPECTACLE

The exhibition questions the urban identity of Zagreb through the relation between crafts shops and activities, their shopwindows and signs, and the city’s façades covered with huge advertisement surfaces of commercial companies.

Photographs of still active or abandoned crafts shops and their advertisements and signs are presented as a document of this part of urban life, which is disappearing more and more from our everyday experience of the city.

The digital interventions establish a symbolic and metaphoric relationship between the disappearing craftsmen’s shop signs and the commercial advertising on huge billboards. Photographs of craftsmen’s shopwindows and signs are applied to places in the city space usually taken up by billboards, wallscapes, and other dominant advertising content, as a way of questioning and critically relating to their role, meaning, and presence in city spaces, but also as a way of securing recognition for crafts. (R.R.)

Translation: Anja Iveković