ANNOUNCEMENT: THE 54TH ZAGREB SALON – WITHOUT ANESTHESIA

12 March 2019

THE 54TH ZAGREB SALON OF VISUAL ARTS
WITHOUT ANESTHESIA
Home of HDLU
March 26 – May 5, 2019

the 54th ZAGREB SALON – WITHOUT ANESTHESIA, according to the curatorial concept of Branka Benčić and Tevž Logar, will be opened on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 7pm at the Home of HDLU, Trg žrtava fašizma 16. The exhibition will remain open until May 5, 2019.

CONCEPT:

The proposal of the curator concept of the 54th Zagreb Salon starts with several assumptions and interests, which it tries to gather within an exhibition that is formed as an existing and recognizable salon format, with the intention of presenting recent artistic production and considering the contexts in which artists work. Considering the background and perspective of the Zagreb Salon the curatorial proposal is formed kaleidoscopically, as a reflection of multiple perspectives and positions. On the one hand, with a twenty-year break, we recall the City scapes (1998) Salon, curated by Igor Zabela, on which this exhibition leans, contemplating continuities and discontinuities, opportunities and perspectives, filled and unfulfilled potentials and aspirations, curatorial practices and institutional history of the exhibition. In the light of Igor Zabela’s thinking about the exhibition as a strategy, the exhibition is a global idea, a significant row of procedures and approaches to ensure that the right viewer sees artwork in the right way. Speaking about this, also the exhibition project Without Anesthesia, which in its internal logic does not address the general problems of presentation, already contemplates the relationships that arise between works of art, institutions and the public.

(…) Formally, the exhibition is developing on the one hand as a generational project, gathering works by mostly Croatian artists who are positioned in a dialogue with generationally close artists from the cultural space of the former SFRY and the international context, finding loose or distant connections and relationships. The Salon thus reflects the tradition of Zagreb as a place that has been included in the international context since the 1960s as a meeting place for artists, critics and institutions. This is the idea that has been inscribed into today´s curatorial practices. The exhibition aims to explore and gather art practices that focus on opportunities, breaks, transformations, failures, and insecurities in relation to contemporary cultural practices in the social and institutional context. Certain metanarratives evolve as a reflection on the format of the exhibition itself, its context, as an attempt to reposition the Zagreb Salon, and it is discursively thought through both through exhibition and the conversations within the side program.

(…) Thought as a space without sharp edges, the 54th Zagreb Salon entitled Without Anesthesia, focuses on the social conditioning of aesthetic and conceptual assumptions, the motivation of the artist. The exhibition explores tensions and fractures within dominant and invisible narratives, questions of uncertainty, tensions or collapses, of space and time, as a places of inscriptions of fractures or potentials. The exhibition and series of events in the side program do not want to be another manifestation “frozen in time”, but wants to show the possibility of constant development within the system of contemporary art, which unconditionally needs to establish a relation to social facts.

(…) In order to articulate some of the formed places of interest, we accepted dialogue as a methodology, deciding on collaborative curatorial work as a dialogue, leaning our dialogue on the multitude of artistic positions.

Branka Benčić and Tevž Logar

ARTISTS:

Marija Ančić, Željka Blakšić AKA Gita Blak, Ben Cain, Jasmina Cibic, Nemanja Cvijanović, Karla Čurčinski, Matija Debeljuh, Igor Eškinja, Fokus Grupa, Martina Grlić, Igor Grubić, Tina Gverović, Siniša Ilić, Paulina Jazvić, Jelena Jureša, Petar Katavić, Kristina Marić, Ines Matijević, Damir Očko, Petra Orbanić, Jelena Petric, Renata Poljak, Viktor Popović, Jasenko Rasol, Lala Raščić, Davor Sanvincenti, Marko Tadić, Nora Turato, Katarina Zdjelar.

Side program coming soon!

Within the 54th Zagreb Salon in the Expanded Media Gallery (PM) the Exhibition of Awarded Authors of the 51st Zagreb Salon: Goran Škofić and Vlasta Žanić – From the Other Side, will be opened. According to the decision of the Award jury both Goran Škofić, for the work On the beach and Vlasta Žanić, for the work Right to vote, won two equal Grand Prix prizes of the 51st Zagreb Salon.

TICKETS:

20 kn citizens
10 kn students and retirees
10 kn groups (over 5 persons, fare per person)

Free for regular members of Croatian Association of Artists, AICA, ICOM, Croatian Society of Art Historians and Croatian Journalists’ Association, as well as students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Art History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, upon presentation of valid documents.
Tickets are sold at the Croatian Association of Artists box office, during the opening hours of the exhibition.

EXHIBITION: MARIJA MATIĆ – THE VOICE OF THE LINE COMES FROM THE SOUL

26 February 2019

MARIJA MATIĆ
THE VOICE OF THE LINE COMES FROM THE SOUL
Karas Gallery
March 5 – March 17, 2019

EXHIBITION: MARIJANA STANIĆ – SWEET LIFE

25 February 2019

MARIJANA STANIĆ
SWEET LIFE
Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU
February 28 – March 13, 2019.

Opening of the exhibition: Thursday, February 28 at 7 pm at the Bačva Gallery (Home of HDLU)

Exhibition Sweet Life, by Marijana Stanić, will be opened on Thursday, February 28 at 7 pm at the Bačva Gallery (Home of HDLU). The exhibition is accompanied by a performance.

The performance can be seen for 3 days: February 28 (7 pm) / March 1 (5 pm) / March 2 (5 pm).

After that, video documentation of the performance can be seen in Bačva Gallery until the end of the exhibition.

“In fact, we understand girlhood as a space of pleasure and opportunity just as much as a place of coercion. And I do not know why we can not embrace it and accept it, find a way to talk about the negative aspects of this experience while enjoying its positive sides,” said Catherine Driscoll, a feminist theoretician in conversation with Barbar Gregg for Vox Feminne.[1] This sentence, with which Driscoll calls for understanding of the girlhood, a broad and complex field of cultural and social implications that characterize the life of young girls, on the one hand, exposed to brutal commodification and manipulation, and on the other, to social minorization, summarizes, precisely, as if it was an artist’s statement, key aspects of the exhibition Sweet Life, by Marijana Stanić. Composed of three, meaningfully interwoven, and somewhat identical, chapters of the girl’s dreams of love, which are rounded off by the show about an ideal marriage – wedding cake, bride figure, and eternal love – this exhibition emphasizes constitutive nods of discourse about girlhood, deformed in controversy between intimate expectations, popular culture, legislation, economics, social norms, sexuality, political subjectivity, and ultimately generational divisions.

The perfect life form girls’ fantasies is represented at the exhibition with the circular infinite white space of the Bačva Gallery, repeated in loop audio recordings of happy endings from fairy tales, by stringing infinite scenes of gorgeous wedding cakes, decorated with flowers and fruit garlands and by multiplying bridal figures in the space. However, this is not about one-sided or literal transposition of girls’ fantasies. Each segment of the work, in fact, suffered a certain intervention by which the author subverted the initial seduction. In an endless enumeration of cakes, for example, they take on absurd proportions, and creams and sugar ornaments cause nausea. The happy endings of fairy-tales are reading stuttering children, who have just learned to read, and in this difficult passage through the text, the life culmination of princesses and beauties (which are fairly active and effective during a fairy tale) is revealed as a definitive fixation of the new passive position: they are chosen, taken away, kissed and are happy for the rest of their life. The brides are, however, alive. They are beautiful and fragile in their exposure, all dressed up and almost immobile, with discrete choreography performing in three-hour performance, with their eyes closed. In such a constellation, where there is no boundary between the audience and the performer’s space, additionally burdened with the relationship between the one who looks and the one who is watched, the audience, drawn into the intimate space of the girls, becomes the voyeur, participating, even if unintentionally, in their objectification. The discomfort of the viewer is, in fact, a provocation, a call for understanding, and responsibility in the society we build.

From preface, written by Irena Bekić

[1] „Catherine Driscoll: Djevojaštvo je prostor užitka i mogućnosti jednako koliko i mjesto prinude“// https://voxfeminae.net/kultura/catherine-driscoll-djevojastvo-je-prostor-uzitka-i-mogucnosti-jednako-koliko-i-mjesto-prinude/ (21.2.2019)

Organizer:

Supported by:

WORKING HOURS:

Monday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM

The exhibition will remain open until March 13, 2019

Exhibition: Ivana Filip – WHAT DO YOU MEAN- YOU LOVE ANIMALS?

19 February 2019

WHAT DO YOU MEAN – YOU LOVE ANIMALS?
Ivana Filip
PM Gallery
Feb 25 – Mar 13, 2019

Exhibition opening: Monday, February 25 at 7 pm at the Home of HDLU

EXHIBITION: PETAR VRANJKOVIĆ – WHANAU

30 January 2019

PETAR VRANJKOVIĆ
WHANAU
Karas Gallery
February 5 –February 17 , 2019

Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, February 5 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery

Exhibition Whanau, by Petar Vranjković, will be opened on Tuesday, February 5 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).

“On yellowed black and white photography, scratched at places, we see a young man and a girl. The young man is hugging a girl with one hand, holding hers with both hands. They both look at the camera. He is smiling, and she is serious, with relentless look pointed straight into the camera. Click. The moment passed. (…)

Part of the family history that physically emerges from the private sphere is actually hidden. What the author, however, reveals through his work is his own emotional relationship to the heritage he found. The photos that were previously in the boxes are carefully placed in the frames, and their transformation from just being seen to becoming a part of the emotional intergenerational exchange ends with the transfer of the three selected scenes from the photo to the unbleached linen in lithography. By juxtaposing an old piece of cloth found in his grandmother’s home to the wedding photography of his grandparents, it is like he adds himself to this photo and gives honor to those whose experiences have shaped him.”

Preface

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Petar Vranjković, born 15. 11. 1997, is a young transmedial artist who uses photography and archive as base factors of his research. He attends the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and studies on the Department of Graphics. He participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions both in Croatia and abroad.

Supported by:

Working hours:

Wednesday – Friday: 3 pm – 8 pm | Saturday and Sunday: 10 am to 1 pm
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.

The exhibition will remain open until February 17, 2019

Exhibition: Marcel Bačić – CRTOVLJA

17 January 2019

CRTOVLJA
Marcel Bačić
PM Gallery
Jan 24 – Feb 17, 2019

Exhibition opening: Thursday, January 24 at 7 pm at the Home of HDLU

EXHIBITION: INTO THE MOUNTAINS

17 January 2019

INTO THE MOUNTAINS
BAČVA GALLERY
HOME OF HDLU
January 24 – February 17, 2019

The opening of the exhibition: Thursday, January 24 at 7 pm at the Home of HDLU

Exhibition Into the Mountains will be opened on Thursday, January 24 at 7 pm at the Home of HDLU (Trg žrtava fašizma 16, Zagreb). At 7.30 pm there will be a performance by Nicola Genovese, called When S.H.T.F..

The exhibition at the Bačva Gallery is the next stage of the project Into the mountains, which consists of a conference, a group residence on Velebit mountain and residences in the Swiss and Austrian Alps. The project ends with two exhibitions at the Shed im Eisenwerk Gallery and in the Bačva Gallery of Home of HDLU.

Foto by: Vanja Babić

Within the first stage of the project, the group of artists (Vanja Babić, Nicola Genovese, Ivana Pipal, Jovana Popić and Andri Stadler), curators (Katja Baumhoff, Bojan Mucko and Josip Zanki) and students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (Ivan Barun and Katrin Radovani), The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb (Maja Flajsig) and the University of Zadar (Aleksandar Tomaš) stayed on the southern part of Velebit (partly in the Paklenica National Park and on the mountain tops), conducting contemporary art research in situ in the mountainous context.

On the last day of the project on Velebit, on June 17, 2018, a professional conference was held in cooperation with the The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology of the University of Zadar. Besides our students and artists, our distinguished ethnologist and anthropologist, Mario Katić, P.h.D., held a speech on the conference. Nevena Škrbić Alempijević, P.h.D. and Jelena Kupsjak participated also.

Mario Katić, P. h. D., a professional conference held in Starigrad; Foto by: Martina Miholić

From September 8 till October 9, 2019, an exhibition titled Withdraw – Into the Mountains at the Shed im Eisenwerk Gallery in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, as a result of a seven-day research residency in the Gallery.

Exhibition Withdraw – Into the Mountains, Gallery Shed im Eisenwerk, Frauenfeld (Switzerland); Foto by: Almira Medarić

The project through residencies on Velebit, Austrian Alps and Swiss Alps practically and artistically analysises concepts such as: living utopia, free shelters, Joseph Beuy’s backpack, walks as a performative and artistic instrument, mountain as a life style, mountain as an existential minimum, free and working time relationship and landscape as an images, experiences and public good. Also, the project tries to answer the question of how today’s artistic, precarious work escapistically, utopistically, dystopically or mimicrically fits into everyday mountain life.

Velebit, emptied by the migrations of the second half of the 20th century, has historically been characterized by transhumance cattle-breeding (seasonal movements of people and livestock between summer and winter pastures at different altitudes). It is interesting to compare the legacy of the coastal ethnic group Bunjevci in today’s context of the rapid disappearance of of cattle-breeding on Velebit and Swiss, alpine examples of “conservation” of traditional cattle-breeding models – comparable to the concept of a living open-air museum.

Unlike Velebit, which is interlaced with free shelters for hikers, staying in Austrian and Swiss mountain lodges is part of elite tourism. Throughout history, Velebit was the place where rebels like hajduks, uskoks, and loners, who seek escape from civilization, stayed. Therefore, the utopian aspect of the mountain is present even today as a model of escape into the imagined Utopia (to paraphrase Hakim Bey – the mythical Croatan).

Artists:
Vanja Babić, Nicola Genovese, Luise Kloos, Esther Mathis, Ivana Pipal, Jovana Popić, Andri Stadler, participative work: Ivan Barun, Katrin Radovani i Josip Zanki

Curators:
Katja Baumhoff, Bojan Mucko i Josip Zanki

Side program:

Katja Baumhoff, P.h.D. from The Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ in Winterthur, will host a lecture on “Collecting Art in Winterthur – a Town Full of Renoirs, Cézannes, Cranachs, Caspar David Friedrichs …” on Friday, January 25, 2019 at 11 am in the Grand Hall, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.Katja Baumhoff, Dr. phil. received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History and American Studies from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. She has been studying at the universities of Naples, Italy and Reading, UK and has been a visiting scholar at Yale University, New Haven, US, focusing on American modernist art.
Currently, she works as an art historian, author, and curator in Winterthur, Switzerland. She is research associate at the Collection Oskar Reinhart “Am Römerholz”, Winterthur, an institute of the Swiss federal office of culture. She is also the artistic director of the Shed im Eisenwerk, Frauenfeld. As a curator of contemporary art, her programmatic points of interest are current social and sociopolitical tendencies as well as material aesthetics.

Organizers: