Category: Exhibitions
05 September 2018
JELENA KOVAČEVIĆ
POLYNOMIAL
Public presentation of the artwork – doctoral thesis at the postgraduate university study in Painting, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb
Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU
September 12 – September 23, 2018
Opening of the exhibition: Wednesday, September 12 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU
Exhibition Polynomial, by Jelena Kovačević will be opened on Wednesday, September 12 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU (Trg žrtava fašizma 16, Zagreb).
ARTIST STATEMENT
The exhibition Polynomial was created as part of postgraduate study in painting at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts, under the mentorship of Prof. Ante Rašić and Prof. Vera Turković. Polynomial is thus a part of a future doctoral thesis, divided according to the periods in which it was created. Chronologically, the development of the idea was shown in the following way:
1: Ten drawings (2016)
I use drawings to explore and portray the states characterized by the presence of several contradictory emotions. Characters in interiors and exteriors reflect the internal turmoil.
2: Selection of photographs to be shown in large format (2017)
In this part I exhibited all the photographs I had used while preparing the exhibition. I put myself in the role of a detective and recorder of family events using photographs, without helpers and witnesses, and I created new documentation that will one day be seen as an isolated moment in the past.
3: Sketches and a visual diary (2017)
In the Polynomial drawing, the backbone of the entire exhibition, I create a juxtaposition of the four selected characters and deliberate upon the positions that belong to them within the frame. After defining the format I started working on two smaller format sketches in which the initial idea underwent certain changes. I simultaneously kept a visual diary to relieve from responsibility imposed on a work of art at an exhibition.
4: Polynomial drawing (2017) and analysis of the drawing (2018)
Five characters are the protagonists of the story: four females and one animal in the background. The invisible action takes place in a non-existent space. Through an atelier exhibition and by providing an insight into my notes, I am saying goodbye to my years-long work.
Jelena Kovačević
Organizer:
Supported by:
WORKING HOURS:
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays (August 15).
The exhibition will remain open until September 23, 2018
28 August 2018
Glorija Lizde
F 20.5
PM Gallery
September 4 – 9, 2018
When presenting the history of a family, the photographic medium is very often, because of its skilful flirting with documentarism, perceived as a testimony of time. At the same time, the element of a positive self-presentation on depictions of moments of staged family idyll is being (inadvertently) disregarded.
This is precisely the starting point for artist Glorija Lizde’s reflections. She asks herself
whether it is possible to retrospectively examine difficult, repressed and unrecorded fragments of time related to a certain family. However, before plunging into past moments, the author carries out extensive research on her father’s illness, which marked the growing up of his three daughters. The illness is referred to as F20.5, a cold medical code for residual schizophrenia.
After that, she places the same three female protagonists into staged reinterpretations of father’s hallucinations, which, by taking on performative character, have a therapeutic effect on places of repressed family memories. In so doing, the artist uses the capacity of photography for resemantization of thinned memories, and she divides the final series into three segments: unified portraits of the three sisters and performances of father’s
hallucinations which intertwine with depictions of still life. Thus she expands the story about father’s inner antagonisms through other family members who are determined by them, at the same time synthesizing multiple views of “one reality”.
We recognize duality, as a guiding principle in the art process, in the dichotomy between dynamic and calming, achieved by interaction between light and shadow; by emphasizing clear, sharp colours with inscribed symbolism (such as red which is associated with life-death, love-war dualities); repeating geometrized motifs; while on the other hand calming landscapes hint at the final state of mental order, closing the circle.
Duality is also present on the conceptual level because the artist uses photography as a tool for introspection but at the same time, she skilfully plays with it in representation, by
manipulating framing, omitting content, alternating subjects and clear context, which results in the loss of connection between hallucination and interpretation. This creates a fertile ground for inscribing different meanings. Therefore, she translates the feeling of apparent closeness and almost voyeuristic prying into the intimacy of a family, exposed on gallery walls, into the structures of some other, more universal reality, which requires facing the past for a better present.
Suported by:
27 August 2018
TIHOMIR MATIJEVIĆ
PLATO WATCHES THE SIMPSONS
Karas Gallery
September 4 – September 16, 2018
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, September 4 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery
Exhibition Plato Watches the Simpsons, by Tihomir Matijević will be opened on Tuesday, September 4 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).
“(…) Mourning for the lost “spiritual model“ is also increasingly visible in visual arts, and thus the Osijek-based sculptor Tihomir Matijević, in his work indicatively titled “Plato Watches the Simpsons“, reached for the global model of cartoon-behaviourism in which the memory of the days of belonging to someone and something still seems alive. It is an installation consisting of a white polyester sculpture (family portrait od The Simpsons), wooden construction as a simulation of a family home and scattered (edible) popcorn on the floor of specified space (the popcorn itself could be a great representation of ravenous gulping of cognitive snacks that do not fill the human void, or in Wittgenstein’s words – they represent the impossibility to technically solve fundamental life problems).
(…) Behind the mask of pseudo portraying, the strong indication of Memento Mori construction could not remain hidden. Since the animations as models simply do not have their own internalities or personal secrets, they could not be turned into portraits. (True portraits require a reciprocal “transfer of internalities“ between persons open in their freedom)[1]. However, the (non-)mastering of subconscious or unconscious projections of one’s own internality into inanimate things (animated Simpsons) could surely achieve what we call the artist’s self-portrait, so if Plato is truly “watching“ someone in the describes installation, it is the artist Tihomir Matijević.”
From preface, written by Zlatko Kozina
[1] Schillebeeckx, Edward. H. Krist, sakremenat susreta s Bogom [Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God]. Zagreb. Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1992, p.5.
Supported by:
The Karas Gallery program is also realized with the financial support of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU).
Working hours:
Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 3pm | Thursday: 3pm to 7pm | Saturday and Sunday: 9am to 12am
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until September 16, 2018
TOTAL REFUSAL
Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel
in collaboration with Michael Stumpf
PM Gallery
August 2 – 26, 2018
TOTAL REFUSAL solo exhibition of Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel in collaboration with Michael STUMPF opens on Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8pm at the PM Gallery of the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists.
As artists state the vast majority of contemporary video games is characterized by combative gameplay.
This seems especially remarkable now that video games have long arrived in the entertainment mainstream and have managed to drop the boys room stigmata.
With gaming becoming both commercially and culturally more and more relevant, the question arises how artists can modify and make use of this media for their own purposes. In “Total Refusal”, artists Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf aim to peacefully appropriate the existing mechanics of digital gaming media in order to find new use for their virtual combat zones. As such, “Total Refusal” is a pacifistic statement, realized with martial means.
Supported by:
GALLERIES OPENING HOURS
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays
Dom HDLU
Trg žrtava fašizma 16
10000 Zagreb
24 July 2018
MARTINA MEZAK
METROPOLIS
Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU
August 2 – August 26, 2018
Opening of the exhibition: Thursday, August 2 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU
Exhibition Metropolis, by Martina Mezak will be opened on Thursday, August 2 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU (Trg žrtava fašizma 16).
“(…) In the 20th century psychology the focus is on the division of personality and its functioning on a conscious and subconscious level, as well as on the intertwining of these two levels that impact the current manifestation of personality. Through the prism of Freud’s and Jung’s theory of personality this work explores and shows the complexity of being in its existence, in its relation to itself and its surroundings.
The installation was named after Fritz Lang’s cult expressionist film Metropolis from 1923, in which the mediator (Superego-unconscious-ideals) discovers that the city (Ego-conscious), functions and exists thanks to the invisible oppressed workers in the underground (Id-unconscious-instincts).”
Martina Mezak
Filmed & Edited: Martina Mezak
Sound: Bojan Gagić
Media and technical support: Božidar Katić, Silvestar Vnučec
Organizer:
Supported by:
WORKING HOURS:
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays (August 15).
The exhibition will remain open until August 26, 2018
13 July 2018
Igor Lekšić
DRAWINGS
July 17 -22, 2018.
PM Gallery
DRAWINGS solo exhibition of Igor Lekšić opens on Tuesday, July 17, 2018 at 8pm at the PM Gallery of the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists.
Igor Lekšić’s drawings on paper draw on the long tradition and continuity of the development of geometric abstraction in the history of visual arts, from Malevich’s Suprematism, Mondrian’s neoplasticism, Theo van Doesburg, Max Bill, Victor Vasarely, Richard Paul Lohse, all the way to Croatian artists gathered around the Exat 51 group, especially Ivan Picelj, as well as Juraj Dobrović, Julije Knifer and others.
Over the years, Lekšić has experimented with various forms of geometric abstraction; ranging from monochrome geometric solids in space to an earlier series of drawings of modular structures, of pronounced colours and smaller dimensions, from which the exhibited Drawings emerged. The exhibition features works of larger dimensions created between 2016 and 2018. The artist does not give names to individual works, but unifies them under a common name of Drawings, by which he emphasizes their nature and drawing medium. He created them by meticulously drawing horizontal and vertical line strokes using fluorescent felt tip pens (marker pens) on paper, in a precise scale and relationships, and at regular intervals, following an organized spatial-raster grid. A uniform pressure of the pen on the paper and suggestion of perfectionism of machine printing resulted in the absence of any narration, description and subjectivity in the work. Closed construction prevents any verbal involvement with the visual structure of the work, the result of which is silence. Long ago, this was defined by the American theorist Rosalind E. Krauss in her analysis of the notion of structural grid (Malevich, Mondrian).
What is important for Igor Lekšić’s geometric abstraction is the artist’s authentic methodological approach where the issue of elaboration of a visual image refers to the structural composition of the grid. The artist bases his theory of geometric abstraction on the idea of using mathematically elaborate method by which he explores the differences between the resulting permutations. Drawings arise from a pre-defined working methodology, whereas the basic idea is the existence of a non-exhaustive number of visual changes arising from a pre-defined and controlled implementation process.
There are two basic and central ideas to constructing the form. First, there is a previously elaborated, mathematically precise, rhythmically structured framework, which functions as a structural and optical unit. The exactness of Drawings arises from the predefined parameters of the grid, which are repeated from drawing to drawing like a matrix, replicating the same pattern of spatial grid. On the other hand, the optical shift is emphasized by the choice and change of colours. In terms of composition, each drawing is divided into three horizontal segments in which the parts of transparent rectangular structural grid differ in colour, luminosity and density of linear strokes. At the same time these segments are the central bearers of optical perceptive relations. When referring to his work, the artist emphasizes his concentration on performance, as well as precision that excludes spontaneity and chance, especially because “paper“ does not tolerate “mistakes and corrections“.
Nadežda Elezović
Suported by:
GALLERIES OPENING HOURS
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays
Dom HDLU
Trg žrtava fašizma 16
10000 Zagreb
KRISTIAN KOŽUL
FORENSIC FOLKLORE: THE ARCHIPELAGO
Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU
July 5 – July 22, 2018
Opening of the exhibition: Thursday, July 5 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU
Exhibition Forensic folklore: The Archipelago, by Kristian Kožul will be opened on Thursday, July 5 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU (Trg žrtava fašizma 16).
The exhibition in the Bačva Gallery is a continuation of a series of works started at Gallery Galženica with the exhibition “Forensic Perpetuality”. Works in the exhibition further elaborate forensic fantasy as an integral part of modern folklore. The setup will include a hybrid installation consisting of independent “clusters” of objects, creating a nonlinear narrative in the circular space of the Bačva Gallery.
Organizer:
Supported by:
WORKING HOURS:
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays.
The exhibition will remain open until July 22, 2018
MEŠTROVIĆ PAVILION CLOSED DUE TO RENOVATION
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