Skuja Braden
Pop Porn
Karas Gallery
3.-24.10.2023.

On Tuesday, 3.10.2023. Skuja Braden opens their solo exhibition entitled Pop Porn, at 7 pm in Karas Gallery (Ulica kralja Zvonimira 58).

On Thursday, 5.10.2023. an artist talk with Skuja Braden will be held with Mihaela Zajec, gallery manager and Leopold Rupnik, preface author, at 6 pm in Club HDU (Trg žrtava fašizma 16).

In his foreword, Leopold Rupnik emphasizes:

Taking into account women in the applied arts, who experienced marginalization and neglect of their artistic creativity in the predominantly male art world that pushed them toward the creation of so-called fine arts, the works of Skuja Braden skilfully underscore the double cisheteropatriarchal standards and the imposition of repressive Victorian morality on women. Their meticulous and conscious selection of provocative themes subverts historical injustices committed against women in applied arts and liberates the genre from the male hand that still extends through the mire of misogyny and the pervasive spectres of male genius.

Preface

Biography

Skuja Braden is a pseudonym and the combined surnames of the international collaborative duo Ingūna Skuja from Latvia, and Melissa Braden from California who work collectively and primarily with porcelain. Skuja Braden represents an “absence of presence” of an individual author, where
these two artists have combined forces creating a fictive and alternate proxy identity. Collaboration is the non-hierarchical and inclusive framework Skuja Braden utilize as a method, strategy, and philosophy, to explore alternative relations to power through a fusion of disparate identities, inclinations, and perceptions. The works are conceptually based, and created through kaleidoscopic multi-dimensional lens, they are I, me, you, we, her, she, us, them, others, and everyone else, but almost always expressed as a synthesis of painting and sculpture. Skuja Braden works boldly blend decorative, literary, and political elements into a seamless statement, while utilizing a material that has historically been associated with absolute refinement. Skuja Braden works can be found in private collections and museums in Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, and throughout the United States.

The exhibition will be open during the period from 3. to 24.10.2023.
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The Karas Art Hub platform was designed for the purpose of developing different approaches to the presentation, experience and processing of works of art displayed to the public in Zagreb’s Karas Gallery, which are presented to the public with digital content on the gallery’s web platform, including 360° shots of installations and video miniatures.

http://karasarthub.eu
Organizer: HDLU
With the support of: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb

GORDANA BAKIĆ
A DIFFERENT IMAGE
Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU (Meštrović pavilion)
September 14-October 8, 2023

Opening of the exhibition A Different Image by GORDANA BAKIĆ will be on Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 7pm, at Bačva Gallery (Home of HDLU / Meštrović pavilion).

“(…) Considering the very specific, defined, and solid spatial dimensions, with a circular form in which there is a geometric centre, Gordana Bakić gives the focal point to the observer. They are in the ideal centre from which, through gentle rotation of their own body, they “unroll” the frieze applied to the spherical walls of Bačva. At the same time, there is no need for accelerated rotation: uniform, permuted details line up in sequence, without interruption, but also without dramatic accelerations. Even the “motifs” of her paintings do not reveal a sense of urgency; as soon as certain constructions begin to move, she calms them down and overcomes the mechanism of self-control. Her achromatic acrylics on canvas scrolls are filled with forms that freely combine two dominant “motifs” from her entire visual repertoire so the organic shapes of swelling, growth, and dispersed blisters harmoniously alternate with “technical,” archeomechanical details almost regularly, “controlling“ each other so that they do not dominate the whole painting. This collision creates, of course, a certain “noise”, so – considering the sound hypertrophy of Meštrović’s space – any uncontrolled movement of the observer could cause an unwanted sound cacophony. For the same reasons, the artist does not create an environment that requires physical interaction and participation of the observer in a manner dictated by ambient installation or any other form of “open” work. However, this does not suggest a passive relationship between the work and the observer but rather establishes a dynamic balance: the work does not capture the viewer, and the viewer does not usurp the appearance, position in space, status, and character of the work.

Meštrović’s Home of Fine Artists, by its main characteristics, is a synthetic expression of some of the artist’s most important artistic attitudes, an architectural demonstration of their eclectic, historicist, and monumental inclinations, but with a perfect circular form and a reduction of details, essentially a modernist work. For the central space of such a venue, Gordana Bakić deliberately creates a painting, relying on the correspondence between the highly organized eclectic space and the profiled language of her own eclectic and neo-mannerist works.

In this process, the language of her works does not submit to the trials of that space, meaning that she does not deviate from or revise her dominant discourse. The “technical” adaptation and gigantism of motifs are already established practices in her body of work: the journey from miniature diary-like visual notes from the series Pokusni radovi (EN Experimental Works) or from small drawings in the Uz prijenos (EN With Transmission) series to developed formats is not of an evolutionary nature but rather these units emerge in parallel. Viewed from a single, ideal centre, we will perceive these minimal, fragmentary records the same way as the whole that we are following in a circular sequence.”

Marijan Špoljar

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Gordana Bakić was born on March 28, 1972 in Zagreb. She graduated from the School of Applied Art and Design in 1990. In the same year, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, studying Art at the Teaching Department. She graduated in the class of prof. Zlatko Keser in 2001. In 2006, she enrolled in postgraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, majoring in Painting (mentor Prof. Bojan Gorenec), and in 2011 she received her master’s degree. Since 2012, she has been employed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In 2020, she was elected as an associate member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She exhibited at more than 30 solo and 70 group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. She lives and works in Zagreb.

Works and contact: http://www.gordanabakic.art

PREFACE

WORKING HOURS: 

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

The exhibition will be opened until October 8, 2023