At the end of April, the 37th Youth Salon opens at the Croatian Association of Fine Artists in Zagreb – the largest national event for artists under the age of 35

 The Youth Salon, the biennial and largest national exhibition of visual artists under the age of 35, presents its 37th edition this year, which opens on Thursday, 25 April at 7 p.m. at the Home of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists, also known as the Meštrović Pavilion. In each of its editions, the Youth Salon is held at numerous locations throughout the city. This year’s central exhibition, curated by Lovro Japundžić and thematically determined and titled The Clock Fell Into the Well, will occupy all the exhibition spaces of the Home of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists, showcasing the works of thirty young artists. Permanent exhibitions such as Situations (22 May – 16 June) curated by Lora Rajčić and Ivana Završki, also featuring about thirty young artists, and the exhibition of students of the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb Venientes (17 May – 29 May) will open in various city spaces such as the Archaeological Museum, AMZ Gallery, Art&CeRZ and Putolovac, among others.

The novelty of this year’s Youth Salon lies in the additional programmatic and spatial expansion of the event through the city through the Takeover project, realized within the framework of the EU network CreArt, almost like a small festival of contemporary art in which five selected young artists will “occupy” the spaces of prominent companies in the cultural and creative industries with their works and actions. Takeover is curated by the Kućća collective with the members Jurica Mlinarac, Klara Petrović and Luja Šimunović .

The thirty-seventh Youth Salon will stay open until 16 June this year, and the award winners for the most outstanding achievements of this year’s event will be announced on 11 June.

Central exhibition of the 37th Youth Salon:
The Clock Fell Into the Well | Home of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists |

25 April – 16 June

With its biennial nature and focus on the practices of artists under 35 years of age, the Youth Salon has established itself as an extraordinary event in the domestic art scene, a kind of platform for the presentation and development of new artistic movements and names that represent the future of the art scene in Croatia at this moment. The goal of the Youth Salon is to help young fine and visual artists in the development of their artistic practice and careers through its exhibition, performance and international accompanying programs, as well as to introduce new artistic movements of the contemporary visual arts scene to the public. The thematically determined central exhibition of the 37th Youth Salon titled The Clock Fell Into the Well curated by Lovro Japundžić, featuring the works of 30 selected and invited artists, opens on Thursday, 25 April at 7 p.m. at the Home of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists / Meštrović Pavilion.

The works in the exhibition explore the possibilities that arise due to the mismatch with the normative flow of time, manifested through the exploration of new directions of previously neglected relationships with time. Through a broad thematic lens in their works, which include an exceptionally large number of various installations, as well as sculptures, photographs, mosaics, and video works, the artists look for moments of interruption and gaps that free us from imposed temporal frameworks, limitations and demands of the immediate present. Among the thematic preoccupations, there is a visible focus on the increasing impossibility of separating online and offline life, and consequently the overlapping of memories and the creation of narratives that are personal, but at the same time public and everyone’s, which leads us to reactualize and interpret our own past with the help of other people’s experiences from the Internet, through recording daily routines, dissociations, digital and mental escapism, passing time, even pausing and negating work, entropy, speculative futures, dispersed emotions, and the inevitable concern for endangered natural resources.

37 th Youth Salon – Artist

About the curator of the exhibition The Clock Fell Into the Well:

Lovro Japundžić (1990, Zagreb) completed studies in art history and sociology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and the CuratorLab program at the Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Sweden. He is a curator and producer with extensive experience in curating and producing exhibitions, festivals and other cultural programs. Since 2018, he has been a member of the curatorial collective that runs the Organ Vida International Festival, and since 2019 he has been working as a curator at the Močvara Gallery. Between 2021 and 2023 he worked as one of the managers of Miroslav Kraljević Gallery (GMK). From 2013 to 2019 he worked as a program selector and promoter for the Association for the Promotion of Independent Music Culture – Živa muzika.

Accompanying performance, music, film and theoretical program of the 37th Youth Salon

In addition to the main exhibition program, the 37th Youth Salon organizes a diverse accompanying program consisting of performance, film, music, and educational programs. At the opening of the Youth Salon, there will be a performance by the Massa Confusa group of artists – Marianna Nardini, Bruna Jakupović and Lana Lehpamer, while the beginning of May, specifically 7 and 8 May, will feature the performance of a new production by the Spanish collective Institute for Postnatural Studies in collaboration with artists Marko Gutić Mižimakov and Nika Pećarina. The performance triplet will conclude with the project by 3rd-year undergraduate students of Contemporary Dance choreographed by Sonja Pregrad This Is Not a Small Dance on 11 May, all at the Home of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists. The theme of the central exhibition of the Youth Salon, The Clock Fell Into the Well, will be further expanded with the international symposium Temporalities in Exhibition Practices, which will be attended by invited international curators on 18 May, also at the Home of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists. The film program of the 37th Youth Salon is organized in collaboration with the 25 FPS Association as part of the Visions program, which will be shown on 14 May at the Kinoteka Cinema. For the entire duration of the Youth Salon, various music programs will be organized, including listening sessions by the audio-visual collective Heartskomerz and the presentation of SNOP, a series of concert and discursive evenings of innovative audio-visual performances.

37th Youth Salon Program

Exhibitions of the 37th Youth Salon:

► The Clock Fell Into the Well | Home of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists / Meštrović Pavilion
Duration: 25 April – 16 June 2024 | Opening: 25 April, 7 p.m.
Curator: Lovro Japundžić

► Situation | Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, AMZ Gallery, Art&CeRZe Gallery
Duration: 22 May – 16 June 2024 | Opening: 22 May, 7 p.m.
Curators: Lora Rajčić, Ivana Završki

► Venientes | Šira Gallery
Duration: 17 May – 29 May 2024 | Opening: 17 May, 7 p.m.

► Takeover | 3LHD, 404 Agency, Infinum, Leapwise, VMD
Duration: May 2024
Curators: Kućća: Jurica Mlinarec, Klara Petrović, Luja Šimunović

For more information about the 37th Youth Salon, all exhibitions and programs visit www.salonmladih.hdlu.hr.

Support for the 37th Youth Salon is provided by:

Patron: President of the Republic of Croatia, Zoran Milanović

With the Support of: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb, Zagreb Tourist Board, co-financed by the EU, Creart 3.0, Office for Cooperation with NGOs of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, Austrian Cultural Forum, Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)
Partners: Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb, Zagreb Rehabilitation Centre / ​​Art&CeRZ, Serbian National Council, Youth Bienniale
Takeover Program Partners: 3LHD, 404 Agency, Infinum, Leapwise, VMD
Sponsors and Donors: Erste Bank, Adris Group, Večernji list, Go2Digital, HRT, Vujičić Collection, Anonymous Philanthropist.

Co-financed by the European Union – CREA-CULT-2023-COOP. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them. [Project number: 101128499]

The views expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office for Cooperation with NGOs of the Government of the Republic of Croatia.