European Month of Creativity
Curators: Kustoski kolektiv Kućća
Artists: Andrej Beštak i Anja Leko, Teuta Gatolin, Robert Fenrich, Gaia Radić i ROSE kolektiv (Bruna Jakupović, Lana Lehpamer i Ivor Tamarut)

The Croatian Association of Fine Artists, for this year’s European Month of Creativity, within the EU project CreART 3.0, has organized a small festival of contemporary art in business premises – TAKEOVER.

Emerging artists (Andrej Beštak and Anja Leko, Teuta Gatolin, Robert Fenrich, Gaia Radić, and the ROSE collective (Bruna Jakupović, Lana Lehpamer, and Ivor Tamarut)), selected by the curatorial collective KUĆĆA, “took over” spaces within recognized companies operating in or related to the fields of cultural and creative industries (404 Agency, Infinum, Leapwise, Studio 3LHD, VMD group).

When selecting the works, the curators, in addition to considering the typologies of the spaces encountered in the project, also examined the production of content for those spaces with the aim of establishing a closely related interaction between the artistic projects they represent and the workers who would encounter these projects daily. The result is excellent collaboration, significant interest from company employees, as well as from owners who have shown interest in retaining certain works in their corporate spaces.

The artists exhibited their works in the companies and presented their work to the employees. Each intervention was also presented to the public through open-door events and conversations with the artist.

Artistic Interventions:

Teuta Gatolin creates digital collages based on archival visuals in the public domain, mostly sourced from old magazines, encyclopedias, or other scientific studies. The archival material is collected based on the keyword search of visuals used to describe the concept of “nature” – whatever that word meant in the context of a particular year, decade, location, or source publication. The collages are created using the scanography method and are layered multiple times. The English and Croatian translations of the book are merged into a single entity that does not have a preferred linear reading order; instead, the audience was invited to browse and connect pages in the VMD company’s space according to their own intuition.

The ROSE collective consists of Bruna Jakupović, Lana Lehpamer, and Ivor Tamarut, who are the creators of the digital influencer Rose Velvet – a computer-generated chimeric identity. They explore authenticity and reality in the digital environment through a new entity that appears on social networks, seemingly harmless persona that occupied the space of the company Infinum, specialized in the development of applications and mobile games.

We are very pleased to have been part of this initiative and to have supported the interesting concept of the Rose collective. Every day in our work, we witness how artificial intelligence is being integrated into a wide variety of solutions and changing established processes. In the world of technology, innovations happen at an incredible speed, but we don’t often see a revolution like the one caused by artificial intelligence. The work of these young artists is a commentary on the changes we are all witnessing, and whose ultimate implications we have yet to discover.

Zrinka Lepan, Infinum d.o.o.

Andrej Beštak and Anja Leko are an artistic duo who combine audiovisual techniques to create emotive, bizarre, and fantastical environments. These environments carry narratives, one of which was located within the space of the architectural firm 3LHD. The atrium of the office was occupied by sculptural installations made of ceramics, metal, and plastic – meditative shrines dedicated to hybrid goddesses.

This is the first time we are participating in the Takeover project. Collaborating with the team from HDLU, the curators, and of course, the artists has been very pleasant and interesting. After the works were exhibited in our green atriums, we eagerly anticipated the conversation with the artists. It was great to have the opportunity to hear their perspectives.

Romana Ilić, 3LHD @Urania

Robert Fenrich, in his work, breaks down traditional dichotomies between the fictional and the real, as well as between technology and nature, through immersive spatial installations whose pronounced narrativity is connected to inexplicable phenomena. Within the space of the communication agency 404, mysterious beings, spaces, and objects from untold pasts were hidden, quietly seeking the attention of those in their vicinity.

New media artist Gaia Radić presented a project within the space of the company Leapwise, in which she explored the relationships between virtual, mental, and physical spaces. Through virtual modeling and contemporary printing technologies, she investigates mysterious landscapes and beings inspired by technological advancements and the accompanying fragmentations of contemporary subjects and spaces.

About curators:

KUĆĆA is a curatorial collective and independent organization founded in 2021 with the aim of creating a space for collaboration between artists, curators, theorists, and other individuals and organizations working in the fields of process-oriented, experimental, and research-based artistic practices. Based in Zagreb, Croatia, KUĆĆA currently consists of curators Jurica Mlinarec, Klara Petrović, and Luja Šimunović. “Participation in the project is seen as a continuation of our curatorial practice, which is operationally and conceptually focused on close collaboration with local emerging artists and collectives. These are award-winning participants of the new generation of the local art scene, whose artistic vocabulary is characterized by a certain ease of visual language and the construction of fictional worlds through strong storytelling. Our curatorial engagement in recent years has also considered the historical, socio-political, and spatial topographies of the venues of artistic events we have organized (the 63rd edition of the Poreč Annals, the 36th edition of the Youth Salon titled PARASITES).”

About the artists:

Andrej Beštak (1993) and Anja Leko (1991) are an artistic duo born in Zagreb. Their artistic practice includes installations, performances, and video works. They are mostly considered narrators in space, using visual language and sounds rather than words to create an emotional dialogue between the artwork and the audience. Both graduated in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. They have been operating as an artistic duo since 2020, exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions, participating in artistic residencies, and receiving awards for their work, including the Grand Prix at the 36th Youth Salon.

Robert Fenrich (1995) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Zagreb, exploring the boundaries of image, atmosphere, and sound. Using various media, he raises questions about the marginal relationships of traditional dichotomies: fiction and reality, technology and nature, substance and negative space. He graduated in printmaking in 2020 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In 2018, he founded the informal art collective Medium Movement, conceived as a space for experimentation and a platform for the production of hybrid forms of entertainment, which lasted until mid-2023.

Teuta Gatolin (1993) is an intermedia artist currently interested in narrating ecology, exploring how narratives about nature are constructed, the subversive potential of mythological tricksters, and considering technology as a companion species to humans. She was a participant in the third generation of the WHW Academy. Gatolin has exhibited in four solo exhibitions and numerous group shows. She has participated in festivals such as Improspekcije, Week of Contemporary Dance, Platform HR, Perforations, Museum Night, among others. She was a recipient of the Erste Fragments Award for Young Artists for 2019/2020.

Gaia Radić (2001) is a new media artist. In her projects, she explores the correlation between virtual, mental, and physical spaces through the combined use of computer graphics and spatial installations. She graduated in sculpture from the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka, Croatia, and currently resides in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she is studying architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and video, animation, and new media at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design.

The ROSE collective is a group of three artists who specialize in performances and audiovisual installations. It was formed in 2017 by Bruna Jakupović (1998), Lana Lehpamer (1997), and Ivor Tamarut (1998). At the final exhibition of the New Media department in 2019, they performed their first collaborative piece, which involved improvisation and interaction between live sound and image within a closed loop. Since then, the collective has continued to explore ideas of communication, collaboration, and improvisation through collective artistic expression. In 2021, the collective exhibited a site-specific work titled “Working Spaces” at the CEKAO gallery and performed “Speaking Spaces” at the VN gallery in the same year. In 2023, they began a research project and residency as part of GMK, where they developed the concept and conducted research on Rose Velvet – a virtual persona designed as a starting point for further exploration of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and the infrastructure upon which the entire online sphere relies.

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The Takeover program provides art with the opportunity to “coexist” with the bustling everyday life of workspaces. In doing so, artistic works become active participants in the non-artistic world, blurring the sharp boundaries between the corporate and artistic sectors, while retaining their ever-present power to reshape our reality.

More about Takeover at: www.takeover.hdlu.hr

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CreArt is a network of 13 medium-sized European cities aimed at exchanging experiences and best practices to promote contemporary art through a continuous transnational mobility program for emerging artists, curators, and cultural workers, in order to maximize the economic, social, and cultural contributions that creativity can bring to local communities. At the same time, CreArt 3.0 pushes boundaries beyond visual arts, empowering other artistic practices such as performing arts or music, and has also initiated a new collaboration with a non-governmental organization based in Lviv to support Ukrainian artists. The participating cities are: Kaunas, Liepaja, Skopje, Aveiro, Valladolid, Lublin, Venice, Clermont-Ferrand, Rouen, České Budějovice, Oulu, and Regensburg. The project includes 45 residency programs in 15 European cities, over 39 public events to celebrate the European Month of Creativity in 13 network cities, 13 educational programs to strengthen creativity and knowledge of contemporary art, 18 Street Art festivals, 10 annual festivals in galleries in 9 cities, and 6 European conferences and study visits.