Vlasta Delimar’s first solo performance took place in 1980, no less than forty years ago. On that occasion, at the Zagreb Student Centre Gallery, she performed a piece entitled Transformation of Personality (through Clothes, Make-Up and Hairdo), affirming her body as the most prominent medium of her art practice, in which she persists to this day. By examining the possibility of changing her appearance through a simple change of clothes, Delimar begins the exploration of laying oneself bare as the only true representation of one’s identity with a pronounced critical attitude towards bourgeois morality and the aversion to the naked body. It is not rare for her practice to be inseparable from life, which underscores the complete synergy between artistic creation and living. As an artist, a woman and a mother, Delimar entwines conventional roles with subversive departures from them, erasing the limits that constrain the heteronormative view of the female body, identity and existence.
Thanks to her performance art, Delimar came to be considered one of the key figures in the performative art practice in the contemporary Croatian art scene. Even though she is now recognized as one of the key figures in Croatian body art, there was a time when neither the audience nor the relevant institutions recognized her artistic endeavours. Delimar’s return to the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU) is symbolic since her application for membership was denied in 1982 with a note that her art degraded female dignity. However, by persisting in her exploration of the poetry of the body, which is at once intimist and exhibitionist, Delimar has opened the door for an unrestricted expression of repressed female sexuality, the representation of which has changed throughout the years, although the artist has never lost her authenticity.
Vlasta Delimar’s artistic career can be traced as far back as the seventies, which were marked by her collaborations with the Group of Six Authors, mostly with Željko Jerman. As an unofficial member of the group, Delimar claims to have developed the so-called elementary body as her medium, parallel to Jerman’s elementary photography, Demur’s elementary painting and Martek’s elementary poetry. She first took to the stage in a collaborative performance piece entitled An Attempt at Identification, which was performed in 1979 at the iconic Podroom Gallery in Zagreb. A hand-made performance announcement read, “The performance piece we intended to perform at the opening of the ‘Youth Salon’ will be performed at ‘Podrum’, 12 Mesnička Street, on Monday, 19 November 1979, at 8 pm.”, which put an emphasis on the lack of understanding for this form of artistic practice exhibited by the institutionalized culture of the time. In their collaborative piece, Jerman and Delimar foregrounded two aspects of approaching the existential: while the first one referred to a self-analysis of mutual relationships, departing from a personal egocentrism and establishing one’s “self” in order to build on it by developing a sense of community, the second one amounted to a critique of social conventions.
Forty years later, Delimar performed the piece again at the Mesnička Culture Centre, this time in collaboration with the audience, as a way of marking the beginning of the celebration of her long-time exploration of the body, intimacy, social environments and human relationships through provocative and striking performance art. Even though it was not rare for her to collaborate with other artists, Delimar has always put an emphasis on the affirmation of her own identity and individuality by using her body as a metaphorical representation of an identity laid bare. The fact that she has proudly used and presented her own body as a living sculpture, changing from year to year, in spite of, or even contrary to, socially and traditionally accepted standards is one of the things that make her an artist that has truly left a mark on history.
In the jubilee year of 2020, the artist returns to the venue of her first solo exhibition (1981) – the Home of the Croatian Fine Artists. The exhibition consists of forty black-and-white photographs that form a spatial installation and imitate an analogue camera film. The decision to print the photographs in black and white was influenced by a romantic sentiment, the fact that the artist started her career by making black-and-white photographs, which therefore bear a great, intimate significance. Opting for such a cyclical display, Delimar guides the observer through the tape of her life imbued with her artwork, which starts and ends in a passage, acting as both the entry to and exit from the gallery, preventing the circle from closing and leaving a symbolic space open for future artistic exploration. The retrospective venue therefore becomes a space marked by the possibility of extension, inscription and continuation.
The performance piece Ahh… My Artists, My Lovers, realized in collaboration with Milan Božić and the opera singer Neven Paleček Papageno, was created when the texts Delimar created in the memory of the artists through conversations, gatherings and experiences with whom she created her own performance art were set to music. Due to the specific spatial acoustics of the Bačva Gallery, verses dedicated to each of Delimar’s life companions resound accompanied by the echo of a male baritone voice, producing a near ritual atmosphere that reifies the bitter-sweet memories of closeness, loss and creation.
These histories are personal inasmuch as the artists in question have mutually shaped each other’s stories, but they also outline the elaboration of artistic practices these artists tailored together. Here, Delimar really emerges as an artist, friend and lover – her life is truly one with her work that now spans more than forty years. In the performance itself, it should be noted, she introduces a third person, a third voice, that of the opera singer who reflects on the past on her behalf: at this moment, the artist, whose own body is above all else a medium, gives a voice to someone else, a male baritone, in memory of those complex, multifaceted relationships.
Taken together, the exhibition and the performance piece represent the complexity of history, as well as the retrospective collection and contemplation of defining moments. Here, the photographic film serves as a tool not only for documenting one’s own practice, but also for redefining the meaning of that practice in both the personal and creative sense, as well as in relation to others. The same film is open to modification, new inscriptions and supplementation – it remains open forever. At the same time, sang as a part of the piece, the memories of friends and colleagues with whom Delimar produced her artwork are given enough space to come back to life in the full strength of emotion – the medium of performance art itself, the medium of performance, emphasizes the momentariness of all the minute moments in history, which go away, but, at the same time, stay forever.
An overview of Vlasta Delimar’s career spanning four decades entitled Forty Years of Vlasta Delimar’s Artistic Love will be displayed in cities throughout former Yugoslavia (Ljubljana, Zagreb, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Podgorica, Skopje) in 2020.
Biography:
Vlasta Delimar (1956 Zagreb) is the most significant Croatian performer, uncompromising in criticism of society. In 1986 she received the Seven Secretary of the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia Award (Nagrada Sedam sekretara SKOJ-a). From 2005 to 2015 she was the head of the artistic organisation My Country Štaglinec and of the performance program of the festival held in Štaglinec near Koprivnica. She is the key figure in the portrayal of performance through the prism of her own body and the content of the female, the naked body, which in today’s society is still subject to controversy. Through her work, she explores femininity, male-female relationships and life cycles from youth and longing through partnership and motherhood to ageing. She introduces autobiographical narratives into the public space, questioning the demarcation of public and private and the norms of identity politics.
THE DE/CONSTRUCTION OF THE PAINTING
Karas Gallery
November 5 – December 8, 2019
Exhibition The De/construction of the Painting, by Croatian artists/residents in Leipzig, will be opened on Tuesday, November 5 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).
Artists:
Miran Blažek, Martina Grlić, Petra Grozaj, Nenad Jalšovec, Helena Janečić, Marija Koruga, Velibor Mačukatin Lav Paripović, Pavle Pavlović, Ivan Prerad, Ana Ratković Sobota, Marijan Richter, Maja Rožman, Damir Sobota, Stjepan Šandrk, Alma Trtovac
Preface in Croatian and German
Organizer:
Supported by:
Working hours:
Wednesday – Friday: 3 pm – 8 pm | Saturday and Sunday: 10 am to 1 pm
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until December 8, 2019
DOMAGOJ ROGINA
FROM THE SHADOW
Karas Gallery
October 15 – October 27, 2019
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, October 15 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery
Exhibition From the Shadow, by Domagoj Rogina, will be opened on Tuesday, October 15 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).
“The From the Shadow Cycle of Domagoj Rogina is a cycle of still life in undefined, non-geographic spaces in which spreads of solid masses of teapots break through the layers, on sunny days, strands of toothed mountain peaks show one after another, and the cat’s soft-eared heads open their large jaws under the indifferent condemnation of shadowy lying kittens. The title (From the Shadow) stems spontaneously from the atmosphere of the cramped atelier in which the artist creates the attic and the sound of the occasional train, but also the elements of separation from the roaring world outside, in the face of separation from the safe situations of the artist on the Academy. For the idea of an artist as a hermetic who creates metaphorical gold in his alchemical laboratory of lead surrounding him is a wonderful story told by centuries-old annals of populist characterization of an artistic personality, but in reality, it is a constant conflict with the material demands of everyday life and himself. In this sense, Rogina’s paintings are filled with inner turmoil through the alternations of night and day, smooth and rugged, shiny and matte, cool and warm, light and shade. And precisely the heavy shadow, the element of material construction, becomes a place of conflict, becomes a being, as lively and important as other motives, in the rhythmic alternation of concentration – chaos – concentration – chaos, in the form of a dream (or nightmare) and a dark gap at the legs of the wrapped shape.”
From the preface, written by Marija Kamber
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Domagoj Rogina was born in Varaždin in 1989. In 2017 he graduated in Painting from the Department of Art Education, Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the class of prof. Damir Sokić. So far, he has exhibited in thirty group exhibitions like 32nd Youth Salon, 4th and 5th Biennial of Painting and 13th and 15th Erste Fragments, to name a few. He had solo exhibitions in 3.14 Gallery, Vladimir Filakovac Gallery, Greta Gallery and SC Gallery. He participated on an art residency in Belgium in 2015 and in the 2019 in fine art colony of Počitelj (BiH). He has received 0 awards for his work so far. Since 2018 he has been working as a professor of fine arts and technical culture at the Slava Raškaj Education Center in Zagreb.
Phone: 099 501 8068
Organizer:
Supported by:
Working hours:
Wednesday – Friday: 3 pm – 8 pm | Saturday and Sunday: 10 am to 1 pm
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until October 27, 2019
MARIO KOLARIĆ
INSCRIPTIONS
Karas Gallery
September 17 – September 29, 2019
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, September 17 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery
Exhibition Inscriptions, by Mario Kolarić, will be opened on Tuesday, September 17 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).
ARTISTS STATEMENT
I have been looking at the transparency and depth of the white surface of the paper for the last 15 years. It’s a space that keeps following me and doesn’t disappear. Out of the constant need to fulfill it, I came to a moment of reconciliation with that endless whiteness. I now fill it only to create a momentary record, as an act of confirming my presence. Also, this is probably something that will have its end, but at the moment it is how I´m looking at my work in the medium of drawing. This series consists of three larger format drawings that are a continuation of the series, exhibited at the Belgrade Youth Center Gallery last year. With little technical differences in terms of color, composition, and format, the new drawings continue to the initial idea of presence as a kind of measurement of the mental space that emerges during daily drawing practice. Using simple line repetition, as an imprint of auto-identity, a complex abstract narrative within a space that resonates with ephemerality is created. The drawing itself emerges from the static of the frame and floats freely in space, present in it with the observer. I draw the lines themselves with the help of a straightener; with which they reinforce certain spontaneities, which, despite the tendency to be exact, happen on paper. The physical contact I have with the paper in the preparatory process leaves, at that stage, hardly noticeable traces of grease from the hands. When drawing lines, they are manifested either by changing the shade of the line itself or through fingerprints that float to the surface. The very idea of presence gets its additional mark here, while the play of exact lines with a straightener and hand that inevitably errs, confirms the vibrant and elusive nature of the moment of presence.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mario Kolarić was born in Belgrade in 1984. He grew up in Osijek. Currently works and lives in Belgrade.
Education:
2010 – Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, academic painter-graphic artist
Member of HDLU since 2010
2016 participant in the Jalovik Art Colony, Jalovik, Serbia
Solo exhibitions:
2018 – “… i tako u beskraj”, Belgrade Youth Center Gallery, Belgrade (Serbia)
2017 – ”Titraj”, KC Grad Gallery, Belgrade (Serbia)
2016 – ”Vista”, Greta Gallery, Zagreb (Croatia)
2015 – ”Orbis Terrarum”, U10 Gallery, Belgrade (Serbia)
2012 – ”Home”, Galerica Gallery, Makarska (Croatia)
2011 – ”Objectivity”, ParisConcret Gallery, Paris, (France)
Group exhibitions:
2019 – ”Skriveno nasleđe”, Golubac castle, Golubac (Serbia)
2018 – ”9. beogradski susreti”, Center For Graphic Art and Visual Researches, Belgrade (Serbia)
2016 – ”39. Jalovička kolonija”, Zoran Simić Gallery, Jalovik (Serbia)
2016 – ”Remont – Studija slučaja”, Actopolis Gallery, Belgrade (Serbia)
2015 – ”U10 na preuzimanju Kolarca, Kolarac Foundation, Belgrade (Serbia)
2015 – ”24. slavonsko bijenale – selekcija”, Brod Regional Museum, Slavonski Brod (Croatia)
2014 – ”24. slavonsko bijenale”, Gallery of Fine Arts, Osijek (Croatia)
2014 – ”MUU”, old military hospital, Zagreb (Croatia)
2012 – ”Hrvatski suvremeni umjetnici”, Ernst and Young, Den Haag (Netherlands)
2012 – ”Artists’ Book on Tour”, UPM, Prague (Czech Republic)
2012 – ”Artists’ Book on Tour”, MGLC, Ljubljana (Slovenia)
2011 – ”Artists’ Book on Tour”, MAK Museum, Vienna (Austria)
2010 – ”45. zagrebački salon”, HDLU, Zagreb (Croatia)
2008 – ”Transfer magije”, Forum Gallery, Zagreb (Croatia)
Organizer:
Supported by:
Working hours:
Wednesday – Friday: 3 pm – 8 pm | Saturday and Sunday: 10 am to 1 pm
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until September 29, 2019
MIA ORSAG
GLOBES
Karas Gallery
September 3 – September 15, 2019
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, September 3 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery
Exhibition Globes, by Mia Orsag, will be opened on Tuesday, September 3 at 7 pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).
(…) Mia Orsag, therefore, fills the small space of the Karas Gallery with seven – a number burdened with symbolic and associative connotations – white spheres, not entirely regular in shape, in different dimensions and prominent textures. (…)
(…) Each Mia´s sphere with its wrinkled, meshed, we would say wounded, the texture will immediately bring to our mind the particular features characteristic of the sculpture of Art Informel or New realism. But it’s just a superficial and misleading impression. These spheres do not speak so much about the agony of industrial civilization, whose material relics are embedded in artistic artifacts pervaded with existentialism, but much more about the crisis in which, in the digitally organized and ever-changing modern world, the human capacity for contemplation and memorization has fallen. (…)
(…) Mia Orsag, in her own words, approaches lace coasters and tablecloths as a medium in which the meditative energy of devotional and process-treated work is permanently stored. By drowning them in polyester, the memory of a completely different time is permanently preserved. Of course, the shape of the sphere contributes to that feeling with its roundness and completeness. Space and time have merged into one, and each of us has yet to find our sphere.
From the preface, written by Vanja Babić
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mia Orsag was born on July 11, 1983, in Zagreb. In 2008, she earned the title of Academic Sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb. She has exhibited in local and international exhibitions (Poland, Italy, Germany, Philippines, Vietnam, etc.), she organized several art workshops and co-organized several charity events. In 2013, she earned the title of Graphic Designer at the Ivora Educational Center for IT and Management. From September 2014 to September 2018, she worked as an external associate – gallery coordinator for Karas and Bačva galleries. She belongs to the younger generation of Croatian sculptors, who are focused on the exploration and narrative potential of the texture and material with which they create. Since 2006, she has been actively involved in the Croatian art scene. She is the author of the curatorial concept of the 33rd Youth Salon – Budget (with Martina Miholić) and the conceptual initiator of the program called Vrtlarenje – Art hangout. She is a member of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists and the Croatian Community of Independent Artists. Mia Orsag’s works are represented in several private collections. She lives and works in Zagreb.
Supported by:
Working hours:
Wednesday – Friday: 3 pm – 8 pm | Saturday and Sunday: 10 am to 1 pm
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until September 15, 2019
Darija Jelinčić
ESCAPES
September 4 – 22, 2019
PM Gallery
Exhibition opening: Wednesday, September 4, 2019, at the Gallery PM at 20 pm