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Istarsko plavo / Blu d'Istria


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Đanino Božić
Hektar, 2004.
grafit na kaširanom metalu, ambijentalne dimenzije
Đanino Božić, Hektar
Đanino Božić
Alen Floričić
Aleksandar Garbin
Silvo Šarić
Bojan Šumonja
Ljiljana Vlačić
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Istarsko plavo/Blu d'Istria – Istrian Blue
The Chełm Muzeum accepted the possibility of exhibiting the works of six young Croatian artists at the 72 Gallery with a great enthusiasm. The name of the exhibition – Istarsko plava/Blu d'Istria' - announces the place where all the works come from. The Istria Peninsula, a picturesque part of Croatia, surrounded by the distant and blue horizon of the Adriatic, is like a magnet attracting tourists from Europe, including many Poles. A little town of Novigrad, magnetizes not only with its landscape and sunbathed stone beaches, but also with a little exhibition space which has acquired a status of a sanctuary of contemporary art, Galerija Rigo in Velika ulica street. The gallery continues the tradition of an innovatory artistic approach which entered the Croatian art scene in the early fifties. Exat 51 Group, active in 1951-1956 and the international movement of Nove Tendencije, 1961-1973, became a manifestation of geometrical abstraction, art referring to modern science and philosophy. Both phenomena, based in Zagreb, were spectacularly connected by the figure of Ivan Picelj. This almost eighty-year-old painter, graphic artist, object maker and designer is a spiritual father and point of reference for all Croatian artists familiar with a creative ferment of that still inspiring period. And all those artists whose works were based on the verified assumptions and their followers now find a friendly place in Galerija Rigo.
It should be emphasised that among the former socialist bloc countries only Poland and ex-Yugoslavia did not get subordinated to the doctrine of social realism. The artistic aura of both countries was propitious to experiments in visual arts in quest for entirely new means of expression.
Insubordinate artists, visual innovators were looking for the allies to their unconventional visual solutions. Exhibition halls with ambitious programme presenting art which required grounding and intellectual effort contributed notably to popularizing the most vital phenomena inscribed into the art history charts. The 72 Gallery has been supporting the endeavours of artists in quest for new solutions for over thirty years. The programme of the Rigo Gallery from Novigrad, still a new venue, has similar objectives.
Observing the similarity of artistic approaches in post-war Croatia and Poland, the attachment of Novigrad and Chełm, both small-size towns, to the tradition of European constructivist avant-garde, we feel great joy and satisfaction coming from the fact that we established cooperation and started launching joined projects. This cooperation appears to be a natural consequence of the parallel artistic preferences of both venues.
I would like to express my gratitude to Jerica Ziherl, a curator of the Rigo Gallery for her enormous engagement in arranging this show and editing the respective publication. However, our joined efforts would be not bring about the desired effect if not for the friendly attitude and financial support of the Croatian Ministry of Culture which made the realisation of this project possible. We feel deeply indebted in this respect and will do our best to promote the works of six Croatians artists; Đanino Božić, Alen Floričić, Aleksandar Garbin, Silvo Šarić, Bojan Šumonja, Liljana Vlačic offering them friendly support and hospitality equal to the high quality of their artistic propositions.
Jagoda Barczyńska
(translated from polish Malgorzata Sady)


Istarsko plavo/Blu d'Istria – Istrian Blue
Before writing about the artists that we would like to present to you on this occasion, allow me to say a few words how this exhibition has come to be. I have met Mrs Jagoda Barczyńska, the curator of the Chelm Museum on several occasions: in Milan, Zagreb and during her stay in Novigrad, a small town on the northwestern part of the Istrian coast where I live and work. To be more precise, our cooperation started with the exhibition of Janusz Kapusta in the Rigo Gallery in Novigrad, the preface of which was written by Jagoda Barczyńska. Our short meetings would always finish with the same wish – to launch a joint project. Since the activities of the Rigo Gallery, inter alia, include also more recent artistic activities and focus on a specific group of Istrian artists whose work is followed and eagerly exhibited at the Gallery, the two of us have opted for a project entitled Istarsko plavo/ Blu d'Istria (Istrian Blue). Hence, we decided to organize an exhibition at the Rigo Gallery which would present to the Chelm (Polish) artistic public a specific region (Istria, Croatia), and what was happening there in the sphere of contemporary art. As the analysts of contemporary artistic events would say, what is at stake here is mapping of local (geographic) artistic practices. However, since no study has been written on this issue, this exhibition can be classified neither according to the theme nor according to the problems it raises. It only reveals specific possibilities of "naming" a work of art, i.e. reveals practices of individual artists. This is why it does not represent the complete, in absence of a better term, Istrian recent artistic achievements, bur rather current (subjective) consideration of artists and their works (some of which have been created specifically for this exhibition). I believe that the selected artists represent a complete complementary span of contemporary creative procedures, and generational and expressive pluralism of mutually equal and valid authorial positions. Each individual work represents contemporary art dominated by the guidelines of "multicultural realism"; in other words, those artists that participate at the exhibition deal not only with "signifying practices" and "production of meaning", but also with constitution of social reality from the position of desired social engagement.
Why Istrian Blue? Notwithstanding an extremely rich cultural heritage and history of "long duration" stemming from the centuries long immersion into the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Central European space (revealing influences and points of contacts, stagnations and progress, crises in searching and (not)finding identity), notwithstanding numerous meanings of the times that have passed, the Istrian region is mostly known for its tourism. Accordingly, Istrian advertising material for this purpose appropriates adjectives such as "red" (because of the geological feature of the red soil) or "green" (because of the color of nature, i.e. vegetation). Since the emphasis is on colors, we have added "blue", because, if nothing else, this is the standard color of the sea encircling the Istrian peninsula. Naturally, the color of blue belongs to the Mediterranean basin from the Alexandrian times and cannot be a distinctive feature of just one specific topos. But, since blue has other connotations, especially in art, and since some of our artists literally make "blue paintings", we have "appropriated" this color for the title of the exhibition (which does not imply that we have imposed this color as an imperative). Furthermore, I must add that we have preserved the Croatian-Italian title because the Rigo Gallery is located in a bilingual region which cherishes intercultural relations. To avoid repetition which would soon bring us to a slippery slope of the Istrian present and future, let us start with the Index of our artists. We will not follow generational or alphabetic order, but will start with the title itself: blue.
Of all artists, the most consistent application of the color blue is in the work of Ljiljana Vlačić. Not only does she use blue pigments, but she is a painter in the true sense of the word; she is among very few artists who believe in painting as the essence of one's own being. When others have given up this belief or have rather detached themselves from the purely artistic ideals, Ljiljana Vlačić has maintained and strengthened her belief in artistic autonomy, in painting as a two-dimensional space on which she leaves traces not only of her arms (manual features), but leaves inscriptions of her moods, reactions, wishes and impulses. There is no place for emptiness on her paintings, every centimeter of the canvass bears a trace of the artistic handwriting: in every stroke of a paintbrush, spatula, in layers of colors. There is also no place for emptiness when we read out these colored fields. They are inscribed by a symbolic message with which the artist expresses and refers to others and herself some of her momentary human cognitions. But most of all, paintings of Ljiljana Vlačić talk, as the art historian Sabina Salamon has written, of nothing but love. Paintings I segni di santi, Le noti del Marocco, are pigmented fields in a spectrum of warm hue of blue which we perceive as a meditative state of mind. Love appears here through light which continually shines from the pigmented surface stimulating the epithets of eternal and sublime. Love bewilders because it resists every definition, but, on the other hand, as Salamon concludes, it makes us happy offering aesthetic pleasure. This is exactly what the art of painting of Ljiljana Vlačić, naturally including her professional métier, is really like. Hence, this is not the painting of negation, nihilism, the dark side of the world, but the painting of vitality, continual growth, positive energies; the painting which can emanate its spiritual-intellectual references from optimistic projections of European humanist-enlightenment tradition.
The consistency of painting and of the color of blue to a certain degree can be found in the work of another artist at our exhibition. Bojan Šumonja is a painter who has completely acquired artistic grammar. He is an artist of a distinctive style, a painter of scenic-figurative compositions with occasional detachments approaching the rims of abstract art. Though his paintings are dominated by narrative compositions, he is, as the majority of supporters of neo-expressionist figurations, occupied by the premise of form, construction of plastic language, the role of painting "envisaged as a screen with a view into the world of possible or fictive events". As befits the artist who was formed in the atmosphere of the 1980s, Šumonja is a painter of a sophisticated erudition, an artist who, no doubt, knows well painting tradition and culture of European space. That is why his painting, though expressive, does not represent "sound and fury" of momentary expression, but a specific scholarly painting which always remains intertwined with strong subjective motivations and a specific positive local symbolism and narratology. Though Šumonja has been present on the Croatian art scene for a long time, his painting is still surprisingly lucid, witty, presumptuous and sharply ironical. His painting is entirely scenic (imago). All of his paintings show (un)usual human figures, mostly individuals in (im)possible situations. Such are his Angels that are being exhibited in Chelm. His Angels do not accept the rules of other people's dictionaries. Hence, we could say that they are liberal ironists, on the one hand, and romantic outsiders, on the other. For him, Angels are inadaptable characters (as the artist himself, as it happens) whose values are in opposition with the ones of today's (corrupted) world. They long for love and freedom, for those values which are, maybe, only available to them – angels.
Let us put our Index aside and focus on the color of blue. We need a break to interconnect better two spheres of the painting (manual and technical one), i.e. to make a logical link between the two stated artists and the next one who expresses himself by the medium of video. The Dictionary of Symbols states for the color of blue, inter alia, that it is the deepest of all colors and that "our gaze into that color sinks surpassing all boundaries and dissipates into eternity as if the color is constantly slipping. The color of blue renders the forms of the blue object easier, it constructs or deconstructs them. Motions, sounds and forms dissipate in the blue, they sink therein, disappear. Since it is immaterial in itself, the color of blue dematerializes everything that is caught in its web. It is the way to eternity where the real transforms into the imaginary. Entering into the blue, as in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, means transgressing to the other side of the mirror". Almost all of this complies with the video footages of Alen Floričić. As all his previous works, this one also bears no title. What do we see? An anonymous swimmer (of unidentified gender) whose movements are irritably repeating, an unidentified person whose identity and where (s)he has come from or where (s)he is going is completely unknown. In effect, there is no direction at all because (s)he does not move. Naturally, it is possible to construct various narratives from that, but what needs to be stressed in all these works is their coloristic (painting) values notwithstanding whether the "brush" has been replaced by computer animation. In the same manner as helpless jerking of the hands of the swimmer is irritating, so is Florenčić's emphasis on artificial blue color of the sea. Indeed, "[...] motions, sounds and forms dissipate in the blue, they sink therein, disappear." We could say that it is a pity because the literal translation of this work could be the Istrian Blue, but the subtext is starkly different. As is the case with Šumonja, Alen Floričić also uses the procedure of an ironist. In case of both artists, the body is in the first person singular. In case of Alen, the body is mostly personal, and in case of both artists, it is a social emblem. Alen Floričić perceives the body as a "space of physical and psychic disintegration" and as such represents the key topic of his video production. He questions, according to art critics, the boundaries of the body and appropriates it in unexpected context in order to fight against social abuse imposed on the body. But what is more interesting than a mere interpretation of Alen's video works, is his "expressive use of the medium, being aware of the fact that video is not just a medium for recording, but – at the same time – a medium for articulating author's ambitious ideas".
We finish our discussion on the color of blue with Alenom Floričić though, we must reiterate, this color has not served as a thematic imperative. This is visible in the works of the remaining three artists that we need to present here. While painting component predominates the previously mentioned works, even Floričić's video, in case of Đanino Božić, Aleksandar Garbin and Silvo Šarić there is a strong emphasis on interior ambiences and installations. Though both occasionally explore other media, Božić and Garbin most frequently deal with transforming painting into an ambience (ambientalization). In other words, they try to solve the question of the possible status of painting, not painting as a scene or a presentation, but painting as a specific aesthetic, handmade, and newly formed object. In this respect, the sole object, i.e. the painting as a two-dimensional surface on which a specific visual operation occurs, is not so important: what matters most is a series of paintings/objects connected into a whole within an architectonic frame (exhibition space). Both examples refer to that type of painting which is based on the visual form and construction, whereas their works are defined by the limits of space – space as an artistic field, space as interrelated compositions of several paintings, and ultimately, space as an ambience.
As Bojan Šumonja, Đanino Božić, was also formed during the 1980s in the atmosphere of the trans-avantgarde (in Croatia known as the New Painting), whereas his individual tradition is, to a certain degree, based on the spiritual followers of (neo)constructivism, minimalism, interior ambience installations of the later geometrical abstraction. We could say that there is a conscious appropriation and adaptation of the model based on geometrical trends and movements in Božić's work. And as we know, geometry is the language of "condensed forms, the language of a project, clear and stable: it is the language stemming from a specific kind of plastic imagination." Hence, in case of Božić, there is a strong belief in the continuity of scientifically motivated art. Simply put, he likes to have all events on the surface and in space under control. He craves for measure and order which is why we can consider his work in the framework of the "strategy of balance" which is one of the features of "relational composition" in the works of those authors who do not reject rationalism. In case of Božić, painting is a specific object. His Acres are material objects made in graphite on a metal surface covered with lining paper. He is not interested in a painted scene, but in specific forms and textures of the surface which he places in spatial relationships. His tendency to control events on the surface, his aspiration for measure reveal his revived belief in the rational which emerges from a kind of art revealing something strongly reliable, positive and constructive.
Unlike Božić who could be termed "serious", Garbin is always "cheerful" in his artistic expression, but "grave" in topics he chooses. His works explore antagonisms of the "Western" and "Eastern" culture – fast capitalism and slow Eastern systems. To that effect, for the past fifteen years or so, he has been elaborately developing procedures for mapping motifs appropriated from cartographic iconography which he uses to comment on global-social procedures such as contemporary globalization. For him, globalization does not only imply "blending of culture and chaos of identity followed by eclectic "international" style, but, most of all, colonialism which is no longer the issue of identity, but a serious problem of repression laid bare by perfidious mechanisms of power". Just as the mechanisms of power are perfidious, so are Garbin's visual solutions. His Surfaces which are, at first glance, attractive, almost decorative works in pastel colors, function as the catalysts for the artist's mental hypotheses, or, in other words, they exist as surfaces on which the procedure of recontextualization of social conventions takes place. Parts of schematized state borders, names of regions or names of the same terms, but in different languages become signs for expressing identical if not very similar connotations. Therefore, what we have here is an attempt to establish a sign system which is the subject of culture, on the one side, and abstract term which changes into a physical object, on the other. Reaction of observers to such visual signs located in an ambience where they usually function as a foreign body should, pursuant to the author's intention, provoke if not resistance, than at least flexibility of criteria for valorizing social, cultural and, consequently, artistic phenomena. Hence, his work is not marked by formal or manual feature, his standpoints surpass aesthetic dimensions of the work. A distinctive feature of Garbin's individual standpoint lies in analytic-critical and mental nature of art: his works express very precise attitudes, but are not devoid of decorative implications, they are methodical, but utterly open. This is what enables him to continuously question numerous cognitions which are not the result of immediate individual experiences and reflections, but rather the result of careless appropriation of social conventions.
All mentioned artists primarily explore manual aspects of the artifact (painting, video, object, ambience) in materials of standard artistic application, and Silvo Šarić appropriates most frequently the "open work", or more precisely, the work which does not have just one completed form, but can be changed either pursuant to the wish of the artist or the observer. It is in this connection among apparently antithetical formulation principles, in this mixture of expressive procedures for defining individual elements of the form, and the moment of "chance" in formulation a possible final outlook of the work, where the basic feature of Šarić's installations lies. Unlike other artists dominated by either subjective or rational approach to construction and conceptual component, Šarić founds his formative procedure on the power of mental visualization which relies on the "metaphysics of the exactitude". This exactitude draws inspiration for shaping solutions from this, at the first glance, paradoxical unity which resists formal and conceptual classification. One of the works exhibited in Chelm consists of a separate (real) blackboard of a bigger dimension with attached paper leaflets containing a text. While reading instruction, the observer perceives the blackboard as a potential "painting" of limited or temporary duration. Namely, the observer writes mathematical operations on the blackboard with a chalk that can stay there or can be erased. Naturally, Šarić counts on a dialogue which suggests a conclusion to the visitor/observer. But what is far more important is a cognition that the observer is faced with a common everyday object in a traditional artistic space. This brings us closer to the sphere of the ready-made, i.e. accepting already existent objects which are inserted in the context of art by a conscious choice and nomination of the artist. In this respect Silvo Šarić offers his contribution to the post-Duchampean conceptualization of art, i.e. the premise that art is not (solely) an aesthetic and formative activity, but also an activity closely related to cognition and judgment. This is exactly the sphere of Šarić's project. His procedure is not weakened by expanding his expressive techniques but poses a challenge which submerges into the very foundations of the nature of art. As many other followers of Duchamp, Šarić reveals that the total human activity in the sphere of art and in the sphere of wider practical activities alike can today be integrated into a global and layered concept of culture.
Jerica Ziherl
(translation from croatian by Iva Polak)
 
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