Category: Events
09 May 2023
LEA VIDAKOVIĆ
Family Portrait
Prsten Gallery
May 17 – June 11, 2023
Exhibition opening: May 17, 2023 at 7 pm in PM Gallery
The exhibition is included in the program of Animafest (June 5 – June 10)
Internationally acclaimed visual artist and animator Lea Vidaković has created her work Family Portrait in two ways in terms of presentation. In the first case, it is an animated film intended primarily for viewing in standard movie theatres and projection rooms, and in the second, it is a gallery installation composed of synchronized projections and artefacts (dolls and miniature models) arranged in the space, with which the animated material was realized. Therefore, the gallery presentation of Family Portrait – which is the subject here –confronts visitors with two compatible or complementary realities: a two-dimensional virtual and a three-dimensional physical one. In fact, the project was developed as a kind of work in progress, which Lea gradually revealed by intermittently exhibiting some of its parts. The exhibition at the Meštrović Pavilion of the Croatian Society of Fine Artists marked the end of this process, and all interested parties can finally experience Family Portrait in its entirety. Unlike the film, in which the artist treats the basic narrative line linearly, that is, successively, by means of gallery projections – seven of them – she affirms the principle of simultaneity and fragments the entire plot into the same number of spatially conditioned segments. Why spatially conditioned? Namely, the action of Lea’s puppet animation takes place in a large family house in which there are seven rooms of different purposes, with each projection thematizing the events in one of them. Lea is a master of creating specific narratives, whose predominantly dark moods are sometimes imbued with restrained humour or irony. The protagonists of Family Portrait do not express their existentially intonated anxiety in an overtly pathetic or dramatic way; they primarily emanate apathy, the cause of which lies in mostly suppressed but fatally persistent tensions. According to her own words, when creating the basic plot of Family Portrait, Lea was inspired by a quote from the Japanese Buddhist thinker and peace activist Daisaku Ikeda, according to which every family has its own specific circumstances and problems that only it can truly understand. The artist lucidly brings all the recipients of the gallery version of this work from the potential position of uninterested, uninformed and indifferent passers-by into an active voyeur position from which they will be able to immerse themselves in – as Ikeda would say – the circumstances and problems of one family, fictitious but by no means unrealistically atypical. And thanks to the projections that treat the place of action fragmentarily and its temporal sequence integrally, various forms of immersion are possible, that is, according to individual perceptual judgement. We, therefore, enter the plot through a character or a room that we choose ourselves.
As one of the hallmarks of Lea’s creativity, it is certainly worth highlighting her exquisite sense for the virtuoso performance of meticulously chosen details. Let us mention just a few examples, such as indicating the reflections in the mirror, the recognizability of landscape motifs in room paintings, or the readability of the newspaper headlines, from which we can conclude that the action takes place approximately one month before the outbreak of World War I. As for the content itself, Lea humorously evokes the process of transformation from an everyday and predictable rut to a state of unrest caused by a sudden but also mass family visit. The disruption that ensues is symbolically foreshadowed by the vibrations caused by the vehicle in which the guests arrive, to continue through suppressed expressions of confusion, intolerance, and even minor human weaknesses. The household chores performed by the maid take on the character of unnatural forcedness, the animals add an additional dose of restlessness, and the new vibrations caused by the somewhat grotesque sexual intercourse also carry a certain symbolic charge.
In short, in Lea’s interpretation, anxiety, i.e., indications of a potential impending collapse, manifests itself through ordinary, non-explicit dramatic actions or moods. Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to state that Family Portrait has something of the poetics that Raymond Carver expresses in his prose. Of course, with full preservation of the artist’s original authenticity and awareness, and therefore recognizability.
VANJA BABIĆ
Lea Vidaković is a multimedia artist working in the field of animated installations and extended media, using the technique of stop-animation and puppet film. Her research in the field of animated film is based on the theme of fragmented and other alternative types of narratives for animated installations and extended media. She graduated from the Graphic Arts Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, completed animation studies at HVO in Norway, and master’s studies in audio-visual art at the Royal Academy of Arts KASK in Belgium. In 2020, she earned her PhD in animation from the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She has exhibited at numerous group and solo exhibitions in Croatia, Italy, France, Singapore, Serbia, Switzerland, Egypt, Portugal, Norway, Montenegro, Belgium and Austria, and her films have been screened at 200+ animated film festivals worldwide. She has participated in several scientific conferences and art residencies in Austria, France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Iceland. She has won several art and film awards. She is a member of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU), Union of Associations of Fine Artists of Vojvodina (SULUV), Society of Animation Studies (SAS) and Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies (CICANT). She is a professor of animation and photography in animation at the Lusophone University in Lisbon. She lives and works in Zagreb and Lisbon.
18 April 2023
ALEX BRAJKOVIĆ
EARTHLINES
Galerija Karas
25.4. – 16.5.2023.
On Tuesday, 25.4.2023. Alex Brajković opens his solo exhibition entitled Earthlines, at 7 pm in Karas Gallery (Ulica kralja Zvonimira 58).
In his foreword, Davor Sanvincenti emphasizes:
Human progress and ecology do not share the same nature. Today, the human factor has been introduced into the ecological continuum through the conditions of resource exploitation conditioned by geo-economic and geopolitical dynamics. This happens on its own terms and does not privilege us above the way we think about life. The internal mechanisms of ecology are based on the dimensions beyond our human values, ethics, and vision. They are rooted in the ontological sphere with their own rules, where humans are not the sole relevant aspect, even at a time when our catastrophic actions endanger planetary collapse.
Biography:
Alex Brajković (b. 1992) is a multimedia artist from Poreč with a master’s degree in Live Electronics (Conservatorium Van Amsterdam). He works in the field of immersive multimedia installations in public spaces, digital art, multi-instrumental electroacoustic solo performances, electronic production, programming and complex interactive visual systems. In his previous work, he has created a number of site-specific works in the field of art installations and multimedia (“Dispersions” STRP Festival, Netherlands, 14th Triennial of Croatian Sculpture, “Drumming 0.3” Device_art festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, “Stillness” Museum of Fine Art in Split, “Generative Contemplation” for Cycling74, Meijijingu Gaien 3D mapping festival, Tokyo). He has won the “Kožarić Digital” award for the work “Generative Contemplation – Cellular Automata” awarded by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in 2022. He is the founder of the multimedia studio – Immersive Studio.
The exhibition will be open during the period from 25.4. to 16.5.2023.
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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.
Organizer: HDLU
With the support of: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb
06 April 2023
15 DANA – 20 years
PM Gallery, Home of HDLU (Meštrović Pavilion)
April 13-May 5, 2023
Curators: Vanja Babić and Leila Topić
The opening of the exhibition 15 DANA – 20 years will be on Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 7pm., in the PM gallery, Home of HDLU (Meštrović Pavilion).
With the exhibition 15 DANA – 20 years, we mark twenty years since the editorial tandem Tomislav Brlek/Bruno Kragić took over the editing of the magazine 15 dana, published by the Public Open University Zagreb (POUZ), a press of cult status that is at the same time one of the oldest continuously published domestic magazine (since 1957) for literature and culture in general. Undoubtedly, the duo’s valuable editorial innovation is the concept according to which each subsequent issue of the magazine – including both its front cover and back cover – will be illustrated with the works of one or more prominent contemporary domestic artists, with the mandatory publication of an introductory text about his/her work and an appropriate interview. Such an innovatively designed approach provided additional visual compactness or roundness to each issue of 15 dana, without encroaching on the exceptionality and recognition achieved during the previous decades.
Artists: Barbara Blasin, Jasenka Bulj, Duje Jurić, Željko Kipke, Luka Kušević, Zoltan Novak, Ivan Picelj, Ivan Posavec, Nika Radić, Dubravka Rakoci, Milisav Mio Vesović, Zlatan Vrkljan, Danijel Žeželj
Opening hours of the exhibition:
Tuesday – Sunday 11 am to 7 pm
closed on Mondays and holidays.
The exhibition remains open until May 5, 2023.
How to Look at Natures? – Art and the Capitalocene
13.04. . 05.05. 2023
Prsten Gallery
Curators: Ivana Filip, Suzama Marjanić
Exhibition opening: Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 7pm
Artists: Maša Bajc, Alex Brajković, Nikolina Butorac, Tanja Dabo, Charlotte Dumas, Darko Fritz, Igor Grubić, Nenad Jalšovec, Lisa Jevbratt, Gustafsson & Haapoja, Olga F. Koroleva, Zvjezdana Jembrih, Alen Novoselec, Erez Nevi Pana, Olly & Suzi, Kira O’Reilly, Ivana Ožetski, Ana Ratković Sobota, Davor Sanvincenti, Nives Sertić, Pinar Yoldas, Vjeran Vukašinović, Otchuda Say.
The exhibition programme How to See Natures? – Art and the Capitalocene documents visual practice, and its responses to possible green initiatives that can detect the consequences of the Anthropocene and Capitalocene, which treat Nature only as a resource. Perhaps it suffices to remind us of the fact that merely a hundred years ago all our food was organic, and today we buy it in specialized stores of neoliberal market capital. Or that the original economic system was based on the gift economy, and not on market predation that leads to global Geocide and apocalyptic climate changes that threaten the sixth extinction, as warned by Elizabeth Kolbert, for example.
The works exhibited in this collective green exhibition talk about relationships with Others (non-humans), those whose voice is different from the human one, such as all the Natures – Animals, Plants, Twigs, Sun, Seas, Oceans, Waters, Paths, Forests, Flowers, Stones, all those that are neglected and vulnerable in the anthropocentric image of supposed progress. The idea behind the exhibition is to show all that makes a human being a fascinating and inexhaustible source of discoveries and creations, which is created in co-creation with Others.
04 April 2023
BRAD DOWNEY
I AM YOU, YOU ARE ME
Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU (Meštrović pavilion)
April 13 – May 5, 2023
The opening of the exhibition by BRAD DOWNEY, I AM YOU, YOU ARE ME will be on Thursday, April 13 at 7 pm, in Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU (Meštrović pavilion).
In the exhibition I AM YOU, YOU ARE ME, Downey presents a work on ‘forced collaborations’ with other artists, manipulating their works to update and extend their discourse, synchronising them in the contemporary status of art. Downey’s work forces us to rethink the subject, space, time, and language, dissolving the subject in interaction, measuring space in potential actions rather than centimetres, disintegrating the timeline of art history, and manipulating language to test the understanding of art. His work challenges the determination of Arthur Danto that art is the history of art, and instead suggests that art is the understanding of art.
Downey’s art embodies Deleuze’s idea of the power of the virtual to transform the actual, subverting and transforming the everyday to create new possibilities for thought and action. He invites viewers to question the meaning and purpose of the spaces they occupy, and consider alternative ways of imagining and inhabiting those spaces. At the heart of Downey’s art is a desire to create a dialogue between the urban environment and its inhabitants, encouraging viewers to rethink their relationship to their surroundings and imagine alternative futures.
Forced-to-collaborate artists:
- 1. Dieter Roth
“He is the artist from whom I learned the most, discovering new dimensions”
- 2. Robert Smithson
“Feel the place, more place than artwork”
- 3. Banksy
“It’s a restored piece”
- 4. Luke Tuymans
“It’s a complicated work about broken plates and fractured identities”
- 5. Jože Plečnik
“Plečnik is Ljubljana’s architect his work is as transcendent as Brâncuși’s”
- 6. Alexander Brener
“He was jailed in 1997 for painting a green dollar sign on Kazimir Malevich’s painting Suprematisme”
- 7. Roman Signer
“It’s about slow cancellation”
- 8. Maxi
“He’s the sculptor who I commissioned to make the Melania monument”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
The Artist Brad Downey is an American artist based in Berlin whose art challenges conventional ideas of public space and urban environment, inviting viewers to rethink their relationship to their surroundings. He often repurposes everyday objects in unexpected and sometimes humorous ways, expressing the subversive potential of everyday life. Downey aims to create a dialogue between the urban environment and its inhabitants with emphasis on difference and multiplicity. His work opens up new possibilities for thought and action, inviting us to imagine alternative futures for ourselves and our world. Brad Downey’s art explores becoming more than being, and in this way restructures and challenges basic conventions such as identity and time.
EXHIBITION WORKING HOURS:
Tuesday – Sunday: 11am – 7pm
Mondays and holidays closed.
Exhibition will be opened until May 5, 2023
27 March 2023
SANDA ČRNELČ
EXPERIMENT ON HOW MUCH MY HANDS CAN TAKE / EXPERIMENT ON HOW MUCH DAMAGE A BRICK CAN MAKE
Karas Gallery
4. – 18.4.2023.
On Tuesday, 4.4.2023. Sanda Črnelč opens her solo exhibition entitled Experiment on How Much My Hands Can Take / Experiment on How Much Damage a Brick Can Make, at 7 pm in Karas Gallery (Ulica kralja Zvonimira 58).
In her foreword, Marta Radman emphasizes:
“By incorporating her own experience of living within an atypical geopolitical and sociological reality of the Chinese communist regime, the artist raises possibilities of questioning a broader discourse of this mutually exclusive and paradoxical system. The insistence on traditional values is associated with a concept of pressure that suffocates us when we are constantly faced with impositions. To recreate such psychological pressure, Črnelč puts a concrete physical pressure on designated places throughout the gallery. By choosing bricks, which is one of the oldest building materials beside wood and stone, but also the first that was created by man, the artist uses literal meaning to represent the traditionality defining the identity of the community. She does not explore the possibilities of the space, but her own possibilities to faithfully present the complexity of the relationships of institutions intended for development and presentation of art with art itself. In this process, the brick represents one of such institutions, and the artist represents art.”
Biography:
Sanda Črnelč (b. 1997, Zagreb) is a second-year student at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts, Art Education Department, in the class of assistant professor Marko Tadić. Since 2018 Črnelč has presented her work in solo and group exhibitions in and outside Croatia (Experimental Self-Portrait, VN Gallery, Zagreb, 2022; Gentle Gallery, Autumn Exhibition of ULUS – Cvijeta Zuzorić Pavilion, Belgrade, 2022; Matrices: Information, SC Gallery, Zagreb, 2022; Ground Zero: Ideal place, LEX ART, Zagreb, 2022; VGA 03, Knifer Gallery, Osijek, 2021; Undecidable Matters, Gallery 8, Hangzhou, 2020; Integrity, Small Gallery OF POU, Vrbovec 2019; Garden and Other Beasts, Garaža Kamba, Zagreb, 2018, etc.) In her work, Črnelč uses mixed multimedia techniques where she puts the relationship between the artist and the object into conflict, with the aim of questioning the concept of mutual intolerance within a space.
The exhibition will be open during the period from 14.4. to 18.4.2023.
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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.
Organizer: HDLU
With the support of: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb
07 March 2023
Antonio Pozojević
Still Life
Karas Gallery
14. – 25.3.2023.
On Tuesday, 14.3.2023. Antonio Pozojević opens his solo exhibition entitled Still Life, at 7 pm in Karas Gallery (Ulica kralja Zvonimira 58).
In her foreword, Maja Flajsig emphasizes:
“In this sense, Antonio Pozojević’s series of photographs titled Still Life is a continuation of this civilizational fascination with dead and decaying animal bodies. His photos show his intrigue with the textures and shapes of animal carcasses when creating artistic compositions, which he emphasizes by enlarging film negatives. By not showing the positive of a photograph, the artist denies the possibility of literal interpretation and opens up a field for thinking about motifs that go beyond the spectrum of topics that appear at first glance. By looking at the negatives, one can discern the kind of animals they feature from the textures and shapes, which provides different insights when thinking about these animals in general. Some of them represent archetypes and symbols ubiquitous in the collective consciousness. Therefore, it is unusual to discern the potent and powerful body of a horse, the archetype of time and memory of the world, lying lifeless, in stark contrast to the usual representation of a galloping horse inscribed in the visual code of Western culture.”
Biography:
Antonio Pozojević was born in Zagreb in 1984. He is a member of the Filmmakers Association of Croatia and the Croatian Association of Artists. He has been engaged in photography since enrolling in the cinematography programme at the Academy of Dramatic Arts (2010). Filmmaking is his primary activity, and he engages in photography on a non-commercial basis. In 2019, he enrolled in the Viewfinder programme in Budapest, Dublin, and Tallinn as an Erasmus scholar, which ended in 2021.
The exhibition will be open in compliance with all measures and recommendations of the National Headquarters of Civil Protection, and you can view it in the period from 14.3. to 25.3.2023.
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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.
Organizer: HDLU
With the support of: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb
SUMMER WORKING HOURS PRSTEN GALLERY, BAČVA GALLERY AND PM GALLERY (Home of HDLU)
Tuesday – Sunday: 9am – 12pm / 4pm – 8pm
Mondays and holidays closed.
WORKING HOURS GALLERY KARAS
Wednesday - Friday: 3pm - 8pm h Saturday and Sunday: 10am - 1pm h Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays closedHome of HDLU
Trg žrtava fašizma 16, Zagreb, Map...
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