The Rigo Gallery in Novigrad is located on the ground floor of the Rigo Palace which exemplifies the late Venetian Baroque style. The Gallery is approached directly from the street, in other words, the front surfaces (a door and a window) separate the external space (the street) from the interior (a 20 m² room). Communication, physical and visual alike, between these two spaces can be almost direct (if the door and the window are open); you do not have to enter the gallery – what is in there can be seen from the street. Such a location of the gallery has motivated a young artist from Rovinj, Aselmo Tumpić, to launch a project entitled "The Room". Thus, a single space having the status of a gallery, serves as a vehicle for interpreting another space – a daily symbol of identity and metaphor ascribed to a room, any room of the household/home. The room is per se an interval between the exterior and the interior, the public and the private; it is a perimeter that separates a public action from a private vision. Coming in numerous sizes, qualities, functions and purposes, all rooms contain a specific order of things that remains petrified in the memory, be it collective, familial or individual. "The Room" by Tumpić also contains such order of things, but it has to be searched for, we reveal it gradually, detail after detail.
What do we see when we enter "The Room" by Tumpić? There is a table with four chairs in the middle of the space, a shelf with eight ceramic glasses is on one wall, a folded ironing table leaned against another, there is a curtain at the window. We could say that “The Room” is furnished with the usual furniture that can be found in a simple, plain dining room. Though these elements are opened to personal experience, in the context of the space they become solitary objects not capable of escaping their primary function. However, these static objects turn into dynamic images by the use of the printing media. How can that be?
The table is covered with a red plastic tablecloth imprinted with millions of ants. A regular geometrical raster pattern of walking insects is obstructed by a denser group of ants at one of the corners of the tablecloth, as often happens when breadcrumbs remain and provident ants come to carry every tiny bit of the food to their secret hiding places. Let us proceed. There are green cushions with birds printed on the back placed on the chairs. But geese and ducks are exposed in nudity, featherless because their feathers are in the cushions. What about the ironing table? It has a pattern of tiny black-and-white cows whereas the place near the iron holder has a marking of a burnt contour of the iron. Within this contour there is a piece of a burnt (beef) steak. Cows give milk, don't they? Thus, white empty glasses are on the white shelf. However, on every glass there is an imprint of some famous American cartoon character. What about the curtain? A light green curtain imprinted with big and small snowflakes is covering the window of the Room (gallery). Instead of a trimming there is a line of imprinted toy cars. But, this is not all. On the walls of the Room (gallery), across the entire surface, from the floor to the ceiling, tons of stylized mosquitoes are printed in dense vertical and horizontal lines. Here and there, we come upon a squashed one.
In preparing the exhibition, allow me to mention the artist's effort who spent days manually printing mosquitoes on the walls of the gallery, when asked why he made such a room and why mosquitoes and ants, the artist answered: "For no particular reason." The Room is supposed to be just a typical dining room from this region (Istria, the Mediterranean); with a table, cushions, mugs, etc. Hence snowflakes on the window because it snows rarely here (and even when it does, snow melts after a day). As for the mosquitoes, the artists says that during these summer months, they are always on the wall and when we get irritated by their presence, we manage to squash a few, whereas the ants come when food is left on the table. What about the cartoon characters? Just a food for the spirit from the childhood.
From the artist's perspective, we are faced with a funny mélange of the everyday and imagination. From our perspective, the Room incorporates various modes of expression: installation, image, sculpture, print, design. The Room is furnished with recognizable elements, but their juxtapositioning demands a new spatial and temporal representation: the spatial one – by combining various dimensions, static objects and dynamic images are intertwining; the temporal one – the artist is trying to shift a passive daily routine into an external, personal and social environment.
In terms of the presentation and context, this space seems to be complete and incomplete. An impression of a neat and arranged room is a deception and an illusion because we live in a world of a continuous change and flow. Thus, there is something deviant and even exciting in the fact that Tumpić's room evades definition. Topics and information offered by Anselmo Tumpić are at the same time partly real and partly fictitious. By blending reality and fantasy, current dislocation and virtual relocation, Anselmo Tumpić emphasizes a difference between the personal experience, and historical and media-construed representations. Or to paraphrase the wording of Marcel Proust, not all pieces of furniture are the same. Some reflect.
Jerica Ziherl, translated by Iva Polak