IVAN MARKOVIĆ
ANTISTRESS MIX
Karas Gallery
October 2 – October 14, 2018
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, October 2 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery
Exhibition Antistress Mix, by Ivan Marković will be opened on Tuesday, October 2 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).
“Antistress Mix, Ivan Marković’s sixth exhibition functions on two levels. Primarly, it is his personal hommage to 1950s american painting, which he cites as foremost influence on his work.
At the same time, the artist would call this exhibition as return to himself. Monocormatic surfaces, big dimensions and simultaneous absence of big ideas and even bigger pretensions are his both old and new aspirations which – depending of willingness to listen to oneself more then the demands of others – he eagerly and oftenly revisits. But this time at his bravest and one might say – most radical. This time the artist creats with lesser feeling of obligation than before, unburdened even with his own childhood (“No Name“, Golden Angel, Varazdin) – allowing himself to name the exhibition after essential oil that he “accidentaly” found in his atelier. He acquired this name, with no reservations towards banality and at the same time with no ironic distance, as appropriate for his work.
Playing with collage, which preceeded the creation of paintings, writes playfullness, simplicity and childlike freedom into this exhibition, which is something very much new for the artist and coming as a result of already mentioned coming to terms with personal childhood. That novelty could be puer aeternus of the author.”
Supported by:
The Karas Gallery program is also realized with the financial support of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU).
Working hours:
Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 3pm | Thursday: 3pm to 7pm | Saturday and Sunday: 9am to 12am
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until October 14, 2018
IRENA FRANTAL
DE-/+CONSTRUCTION
Karas Gallery
September 18 – September 30, 2018
On Tuesday, September 18, 2018, from 11:00 to 19:00 at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58) you can attend the process of putting up the exhibition by Irena Frantal, called De -/+ construction.
De -/+ construction is an exhibition by Irena Frantal who deals with the boundaries/or lack of them in media (in her case, the media of the book). The artist will build an exhibition at the Karas Gallery on September 18 from 11 am to 7 pm and from the moment she enters the empty gallery, the exhibition exists. Formal opening – sharp boundaries of the media: exhibition – do not exist.
The last day of the exhibition, September 30, the artist will intervene in her work by moving parts and extinguishing/cleaning up the physical part of the work. You are invited to participate in the process from 10 am to 1 pm.
“Dieter Roth did his own Copley Book in collaboration with Richard Hamilton, giving him instructions in the letters he sent from Iceland to London. When the print shop lost one of his drawings, Roth included in the book a letter of apology from the print shop and a description of the drawing. Copley Books are unbound papers of various dimensions in one box. They tell about the process of making books – these books. As a spiral, at the same time constantly spreading, but also confined to itself.
De-/+construction is a work, developed in situ. It’s a book that intertwines its space with the gallery space. Layers of elements (pages; paper residues, created by cutting page edges; folds, created by page browsing; hidden parts; photographs; drawing; text; letters, left out of text cutting; text sketches; bindings; binding materials and covers; tools; text silhouettes; erased text; letter templates…) create an installation that is fluent, soft and changeable. By constantly reading it and by page browsing, it is changing. The observer/ reader’s touch is needed to keep the book alive, and so the viewer – observer/reader is invited to read/browse through pages and parts of this book/exhibition. Some of the questions I ask myself in this work are: Where is the limit/end of the work/book? At what moment does the text begin? Is one part/fragment at the same time a whole?
And finally, is (any) book also an exhibition?”
Irena Frantal
Irena Frantal is a visual artist from Zagreb. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and specialized in the art of the book (MA Book Art) at the University of the Arts in London. In her art practice she explores the media of the book. She collaborates with artists of various profiles on projects that use the book medium. She is the author of a series of Book Art Session workshops.
Contact: irenafrantal@yahoo.co.uk
Supported by:
The Karas Gallery program is also realized with the financial support of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU).
Working hours:
Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 3pm | Thursday: 3pm to 7pm | Saturday and Sunday: 9am to 12am
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until September 30, 2018
Glorija Lizde
F 20.5
PM Gallery
September 4 – 9, 2018
When presenting the history of a family, the photographic medium is very often, because of its skilful flirting with documentarism, perceived as a testimony of time. At the same time, the element of a positive self-presentation on depictions of moments of staged family idyll is being (inadvertently) disregarded.
This is precisely the starting point for artist Glorija Lizde’s reflections. She asks herself
whether it is possible to retrospectively examine difficult, repressed and unrecorded fragments of time related to a certain family. However, before plunging into past moments, the author carries out extensive research on her father’s illness, which marked the growing up of his three daughters. The illness is referred to as F20.5, a cold medical code for residual schizophrenia.
After that, she places the same three female protagonists into staged reinterpretations of father’s hallucinations, which, by taking on performative character, have a therapeutic effect on places of repressed family memories. In so doing, the artist uses the capacity of photography for resemantization of thinned memories, and she divides the final series into three segments: unified portraits of the three sisters and performances of father’s
hallucinations which intertwine with depictions of still life. Thus she expands the story about father’s inner antagonisms through other family members who are determined by them, at the same time synthesizing multiple views of “one reality”.
We recognize duality, as a guiding principle in the art process, in the dichotomy between dynamic and calming, achieved by interaction between light and shadow; by emphasizing clear, sharp colours with inscribed symbolism (such as red which is associated with life-death, love-war dualities); repeating geometrized motifs; while on the other hand calming landscapes hint at the final state of mental order, closing the circle.
Duality is also present on the conceptual level because the artist uses photography as a tool for introspection but at the same time, she skilfully plays with it in representation, by
manipulating framing, omitting content, alternating subjects and clear context, which results in the loss of connection between hallucination and interpretation. This creates a fertile ground for inscribing different meanings. Therefore, she translates the feeling of apparent closeness and almost voyeuristic prying into the intimacy of a family, exposed on gallery walls, into the structures of some other, more universal reality, which requires facing the past for a better present.
Suported by:
TIHOMIR MATIJEVIĆ
PLATO WATCHES THE SIMPSONS
Karas Gallery
September 4 – September 16, 2018
Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, September 4 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery
Exhibition Plato Watches the Simpsons, by Tihomir Matijević will be opened on Tuesday, September 4 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).
“(…) Mourning for the lost “spiritual model“ is also increasingly visible in visual arts, and thus the Osijek-based sculptor Tihomir Matijević, in his work indicatively titled “Plato Watches the Simpsons“, reached for the global model of cartoon-behaviourism in which the memory of the days of belonging to someone and something still seems alive. It is an installation consisting of a white polyester sculpture (family portrait od The Simpsons), wooden construction as a simulation of a family home and scattered (edible) popcorn on the floor of specified space (the popcorn itself could be a great representation of ravenous gulping of cognitive snacks that do not fill the human void, or in Wittgenstein’s words – they represent the impossibility to technically solve fundamental life problems).
(…) Behind the mask of pseudo portraying, the strong indication of Memento Mori construction could not remain hidden. Since the animations as models simply do not have their own internalities or personal secrets, they could not be turned into portraits. (True portraits require a reciprocal “transfer of internalities“ between persons open in their freedom)[1]. However, the (non-)mastering of subconscious or unconscious projections of one’s own internality into inanimate things (animated Simpsons) could surely achieve what we call the artist’s self-portrait, so if Plato is truly “watching“ someone in the describes installation, it is the artist Tihomir Matijević.”
From preface, written by Zlatko Kozina
[1] Schillebeeckx, Edward. H. Krist, sakremenat susreta s Bogom [Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God]. Zagreb. Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1992, p.5.
Supported by:
The Karas Gallery program is also realized with the financial support of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU).
Working hours:
Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 3pm | Thursday: 3pm to 7pm | Saturday and Sunday: 9am to 12am
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.
The exhibition will remain open until September 16, 2018
TOTAL REFUSAL
Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel
in collaboration with Michael Stumpf
PM Gallery
August 2 – 26, 2018
TOTAL REFUSAL solo exhibition of Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel in collaboration with Michael STUMPF opens on Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 8pm at the PM Gallery of the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists.
As artists state the vast majority of contemporary video games is characterized by combative gameplay.
This seems especially remarkable now that video games have long arrived in the entertainment mainstream and have managed to drop the boys room stigmata.
With gaming becoming both commercially and culturally more and more relevant, the question arises how artists can modify and make use of this media for their own purposes. In “Total Refusal”, artists Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf aim to peacefully appropriate the existing mechanics of digital gaming media in order to find new use for their virtual combat zones. As such, “Total Refusal” is a pacifistic statement, realized with martial means.
Supported by:
GALLERIES OPENING HOURS
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays
Dom HDLU
Trg žrtava fašizma 16
10000 Zagreb