Nikola Vrljić
The Siege of Oz
Bačva Gallery (Meštrović pavilion)
August 27-September 16, 2021

 

The opening of the exhibition by NIKOLA VRLJIĆ, THE SIEGE OF OZ will be on Friday, August 27 at 8pm, in Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU (Meštrović pavilion).

“In his current body of work The Siege of Oz, Nikola Vrljić, all the while with an intriguing distinction, is conceptually and formally continuing in the direction already set by his previous exhibition Cirkus!. Now, as it was then, the narrative is based on semantically only loosely related sculptures which, even if they remain associatively disconnected, function very well as stand-alone works of art. This approach allows the artist to keep organically building on this narrative, currently exhibited in Galerija Bačva, for the upcoming exhibition stages. […] In terms of content, Vrljić remains his generation’s most prominent representative of figurative sculpture, equally convincing when dealing with male, female or bestial motifs. […] For, Vrljić has won the acclaim of all those who had previously feared that competency in the traditional sculptural craft had vanished from the local arts scene. And indeed, already at the very onset of his career Vrljić had made a significant contribution to naturalism in Croatian sculpture. This is just as true of the robust, firmly erect, belligerent male characters as of the willowy bestial figures. […] I would say that it is exactly with material that Vrljić’s current deconstruction of traditional sculpting begins, a deconstruction that allows him to bridge the gap between the traditional and the contemporary form of expression. Vrljić creates his recent works in polystyrene sheets, stacking them up to the desired height, and then shaping them by cutting them into the desired form. […] Going back to the semantic layers of Vrljić’s work, as previously, his proclivity for the grotesque in both content and form is well pronounced. We could say that the chosen theme of The Siege of Oz, which sounds like a reckoning with the society of the spectacle, works in favour of his tendency to take a cynical commentary as a starting point in his interpretation of reality.”

from the preface written by Branko Franceschi

Preface

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Nikola Vrljić was born in Zagreb in 1980. In the year 2007 he graduated from the Sculpture department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Since 2003 he has exhibited in 22 solo shows. Some of the recent ones are Citizens at Poola Gallery (2021, Pula), The Gathering at Antun Augustinčić Gallery (2019, Klanjec), Runaways at Josip Račić Gallery (2018, Zagreb). He has won multiple awards in different competitions for monuments and public works and is the author of a dozen public sculptures in Croatia. He is a member of HZSU and HDLU. He lives and works in Zagreb.

EXHIBITION WORKING HOURS:

Wednesday – Friday: 11am – 7pm h
Saturday and Sunday 10am – 6pm h
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays closed

Exhibition will be opened until September 16, 2021.