Martina Grlić
Mindscapes
Bačva Gallery (Meštrović pavilion)
November 30 – December 18, 2022

The opening of the exhibition by MARTINA GRLIĆ, MINDSCAPES will be on Wednesday, November 30 at 7pm, in Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU (Meštrović pavilion).

„Metaphors are all we have to describe memory.[1]“ This is the quote which the artist Martina Grlić came across while reading various texts and it remained in her mind for a long time during the creation of her cycle of paintings “Mindscapes”. Her works are conceptually and aesthetically connected to the previous series Hypermnesia[2] (2021), in which the artist explores the field of memory using the method of introspection and with the use of archival photos from family albums questions the learned ideologies that participate in the formation of consciousness and identity.

(…)

We sense that all the works in the series offer traces of universal ideas and attitudes, but what is characteristic of all of them is that they do not offer answers to complex questions of personal identities and collective experiences. By deliberate transformation of the display, abstract intervention, the artist imitates the passage of time and the impossibility of repeating and seeing the past realistically. In the pop surrealist style of David Lynch, the works exude elusiveness. The relationship between memory and fiction is blurred in a complex way – what Freud calls the uncanny[3] Grlić uses as the main element. With the lack of context, the artist skilfully achieves a feeling of discomfort and anxiety, which is further enhanced by enlarged ultra-lucid fragments that emerge from abstraction and threaten to disintegrate into indeterminacy again.

Referring to a world that no longer exists, the artist in her own words recreates memories that go beyond direct autobiography – her nostalgic works become a reflection of public social attitudes, a set of fantasies and naive superstitions. Although her realities do not necessarily correspond to ours and the present traces of ideas do not have to be interconnected, the artist ultimately expresses herself with a visual language that allows the audience to go deeper into themselves in search of meaning. In this search for meaning, they may get new answers about the world around them.

Tena Bakšaj

[1] ‘Metaphors are all we have to describe memory’: Kristin Prevallet’s ‘A Burning Is Not A Letting Go’ at Guernica https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2016/05/metaphors-are-all-we-have-to-describe-memory-kristin-prevallets-a-burning-is-not-a-letting-go-at-guernica

[2] The term hypermnesia denotes a state opposite to amnesia, but also a very specific state in which a person describes and recalls individual details from his own memory with incredible accuracy.

[3] There is no unequivocal translation in the Croatian language: unusual, mysterious, creepy, otherworldly, unknown

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

MARTINA GRLIĆ was born in 1982 in Zagreb. She graduated in painting in 2009 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. So far, she has exhibited at 12 independent and more than 20 collective juried exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. Solo exhibitions include: Fragment New York, NYC, USA (2022), Potemka Gallery Leipzig (2019), HDLU Zagreb (2018), Kranjčar Gallery Zagreb (2017), Simulaker Gallery, Novo Mesto (2016), Gallery Poola, Pula (2015), Josip Račić Gallery, Zagreb (2014), Karas Gallery, Zagreb (2013), SC Gallery, Zagreb (2010). Selected group exhibitions: MSU, Zagreb (2017), HDLU Zagreb (2016), National Museum Gdansk, PL (2016). Ningbo Museum of Art, Ningbo, ROC (2015). KIBLA, Maribor, SI (2014), Kunstlerhaus Vienna, A (2011). She is the winner of the HPB award for the best young artist (2017) and the first award of ERSTE Bank “Novi fragmenti 8” (2012). Her works are in the public collections Zuzāns collection, Zuzeum Art Centre, Riga; Erste Bank and the Modern Gallery in Zagreb. She is a member of HDLU and HZSU. She lives and works in Zagreb. From 2021, she is represented by the Fragment gallery from New York and exhibits her works at art fairs (COSMOCOW, NADA Miami).

 

EXHIBITION WORKING HOURS:

Tuesday – Sunday: 11am – 7pm
Mondays and holidays closed.

Exhibition will be opened until December 18, 2022.