Sociability
Marijan Crtalić,
Danko Friščić, Denis Krašković, Frane Rogić
andIgor Zlobec
Curated by Maja and Reuben Fowkes
26 September - 12 October 2003.
Introduction
Works
Artists
Sociability CV
Sociability Circle Time
Who was there?
Why Sociability?
Artists on their works
Sex and Sociability
Issues and
Comments
Introduction
Marijan
Crtalić, Danko Friščić, Denis Krašković,
Frane Rogić and Igor Zlobec belong to a wider circle
of artists which began to hang out at the Academy in Zagreb and often organise common projects and group exhibitions in various
combinations. At the same time, they conscientiously built
their own individual careers. Most of these artists share
a studio address, which has become a place of informal creative
sociability. Recent collaborations include projects like the
happening in the newly opened shopping centre in Zagreb, a
video reconstruction of Doctor Tulips Anatomy Hour, as well
as a big group show entitled Žeravica 2: Pepeo in the Bjelovar
City Museum.
Each of these artists has individually achieved significant success
at numerous artistic happenings, winning prizes at, for example,
the Zagreb Salon and the Salon of Young Artists. Although
they were educated in the classicaly media such as painting
and sculpture, these artists on the whole express themselves
through new media.
They
are showing here recent works, and in this way the exhibition
gives a faithful picture of that which is going on at the
moment in the Zagreb contemporary
art scene.
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Works
Marijan Crtalić
Marijan Crtalić presents a monumental
work 'Artertainment - the courses and consequences of my understanding
of life and art.' Through a series of 12 blown up photos we
follow the artist's development from childhood to the present,
and each of them bears one letter, which taken together spell
out 'artertainment'. It starts with a black and white photo
of a big ball and a small Crtalić, a little bit later,
still in black and white, we see the artist's childhood alter
ego, with long hair and short dress. Towards the end we see
a gradual turning from innocent teenage dance to hard drinking
and familiarity with serious artistic creation.
Marijan Crtalić, Artertainment, 2001.
Danko Friščić
Danko Friščić's video works are
pastiches of famous scenes from late night horror films, the
frames of which repeat rythmically and ritually. He is drawn
to the most unbelieveable, horrific and extreme moments of
films that play up the dark side of the collective unconscious.
Next to the video work and three large prints, Friščić
is also represented here by two new oil on canvas works, evidence
of a revived of interest in painting.
Danko Friščić, Untitled,
2003.
Danko Friščić, Untitled,
2003.
Denis Krašković
Along side
the sculpture 'Dada Turban', Denis Krašković also exhibits
'Rose Children' - a white wooden box with blue needles, reminiscent
of a porcupine, from which the voices of well-known cartoon
characters emerge. In the series of photos 'Ostriches to Africa' he points to the bizarre
phenomenon of ostrich breeding here, their inhuman treatment,
and he draws the analogy with the status of artists in society.
Denis Krašković, Dada Turban, 2003.
Denis Krašković, Rose
Children, 2003.
Denis Krašković, Ostriches
to Africa, 2003.
Frane Rogić
Frane Rogić
exhibits the video 'Meantime', which features material taken
during an artists's visit to the former penal colony of Goli
Otok (Naked Island). Visual
distortions on the recording correspond to the fact that the
idea of Goli Otok, the memory of it, as well as the artists's
camera, are in the process of falling apart.
Frane Rogić,
Meantime, 2003.
Igor Zlobec
Igor Zlobec presents his controversial website
'Zlobecsportamateurs', which lies on the border between art
and pornography, as well as several signed digital prints.
'Google Search' brings up a list of pages, as a result of
searching for a specific term, and illustrates Zlobec tactic
of smuggling pornogaphy into art, but also art into the world
of pornography.
Igor Zlobec, Zlobecsportsamateurs,
2003.
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Artists
Marijan
Crtalić (1968. Sisak)
1992. Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, Painting Department
Danko Friščić
(1970. Zagreb)
1997.
Academy of Fine Arts,
Zagreb, Painting Department
Denis Krašković (1972. Zagreb)
1994. Academy of
Fine Arts, Zagreb, Sculpture Department
Frane Rogić (1973. Karlovac)
1997. Academy
of Fine Arts, Zagreb, Painting Department
Igor Zlobec (1970. Banja Luka)
1995. Academy of
Fine Arts, Zagreb, Painting Department
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Sociability CV
A Selection of Group and Individual
Exhibitions
2000.
'Čiča Goriot', Galerija OK, Rijeka: Krašković/Zlobec
'Novi početak' SC Galerija,
Zagreb: Crtalić/Friščić/Krašković/Rogić
2001.
'Najezda' Sisak, Crtalić/Friščić/Rogić
'Shum' Galerija PM, Zagreb: Friščić/Rogić
'Lost in the shopping mall', Zagreb: Crtalić/Friščić/Krašković/Rogić
Galerija Galežnica, Nova Gorica: Friščić/Krašković
2002.
Kmkk, Janos Sugar Studio, Budapest: Friščić/ Krašković/ Rogić
'A-B' Varaždin: Crtalić/Friščić/Rogić
Žeravica II: Pepeo' Bjelovar: Crtalić/Friščić/Krašković/Rogić/Zlobec
007: Žene iz muške perspektive'Zagreb: Crtalić/Friščić/Krašković/Rogić
'Here Tomorrow'Zagreb: Crtalić/Friščić/Rogić
'Otvoreni umjetni' Velika Gorica: Friščić/Rogić
2003.
'Tri sob' SC Galerija, Zagreb: Friščić/Rogić
Galerija OK, Rijeka: Crtalić/
Friščić
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Sociability
Circle Time
A circle for artists and curators was held
on 26 September 2003 in Galerija Balen on the occasion of
the exhibition Sociability. The following is an edited transcript
of what took place.
Who was there?
I'm Reuben Fowkes, one of the curators of
the exhibition 'Sociability.'
I'm Danko Friščić, I'm a painter
who works with video and other media.
I'm Denis
Krašković, professor at the School of Applied Arts
and a friend of these loons.
I'm Petra, I'm a guest
here.
I'm Igor Zlobec, I'm a media artist.
Mein name ist Frane Rogic. I am a video artist,
but I also paint.
I am Ivan Šeremet, director of the Art Workshop
Barutana, and in my free time I also make art.
I'm Daniela
Ljubičić, curator at the Brodsko-Posavlje Country Museum, Gallery Department.
I am Marijan Crtalić, academic painter.
I'm Maja Fowkes, I represent Galerija Balen
and am the other curator of this exhibition.
Damir Fajdetić, photographer.
Vlasta Delimar, artist.
Željko Božić, performance partner of
V.D.
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Why Sociability?
We
decided to call the exhibition Sociability for a number of
reasons. We met the artists in the Zagreb café and well-known
artists' hangout, Sedmica, and first experienced them as a
group of friends. Later on we visited them in their studio,
a rented flat not far from Sedmica in which each room had
been made into someone's studio, although it wasn't completely
clear whose was which, the atmosphere there was full of creative
sociability. Quite frequently during our meetings we witnessed
very heated discussion, or better to say arguments, about
many different things, it looks like borrowing each others
equipment is one of the main topics, so that these artists
gave us the impression of being best enemies. Sociability
contains within in it 'ability', in other words being able
to hang out. Putting together this exhibition has opened a
new space for being sociable, and we hope that this visit
to to Slavonski Brod will bear new and unexpected fruit on
every level.
R.F. What does your sociablility, your being
in a group, mean to you, and what effect does it have on you
as artists?
D.K. I think sincerely that our
being sociable, it's a kind of religious connection. We all
believe in some kind of simpler and better life, but we are
ignorant of all the possibilities which that kind of life
could offer us...It's a journey to a part of the mind where
no one goes.
M.C. Denis has concretised
it.
D.K. My friends have a lot
to say about all this, they understand a lot, theyre intelligent,
healthy, and happy young people, but society holds them back.
Croatian society is not yet ripe to accept them.
M.F. Does it bother you when
you're presented as a group of artists?
F.R. It doesn't bother us,
but at the same time it means nothing to us.
D.F. Each of us is a suficiently
self-possessed individual that people don't over do it with
the group thing, but we were for example received by President
Mesić as a group.
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Artists on their works
M.C. The basis of my work is in
some way my identity, that means that which is visible, and
contains contains that which is hidden about me. And then
that feeling of the invisbiity of myself in that which is
visible, I try to present
to the public.
F.R. I exhibit a video recording
which is not edited, it's two hours of straight recording.
When you look the rough material, something new always comes
out of it, the stream of memory, interesting things come out
from the moments of recording of society and situations.
I.Z. I will leave my work
to the judgement of posterity. I'm switching over to being
a gallerist. I rounded off my career perhaps with this exhibition.
D.K.
These are photographs of ostriches taken on a farm in Velika
Gorica. These are photos of ostriches, which are basically
absurd. It's absurd that ostriches live near Velika Gorica.
It's absurd that anyone takes ostriches out of Africa. It's a story about the mistreatment of animals. Ostriches usually
live up to 80 years. According to Croatian law, which I studied,
each one should be given 50 m2 of space, but that is not carried
out, because the goal is profit.
And there is an analgy here with art, in other
words, how society treats artists.
D.F. My work is some kind
of a 'variability of sociability' ... that means various possibilities
of communication and socialising. It doesn't have to be a
slave of social norms, but it can be realised in different
ways. For example in love or sex, I dont think there is one
right way of behaving.
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Sex and Sociability
M.C. Sex and making relationships
has descended to the level of a an existential problem. In
other words sex is used as a way out of existential problems.
In my opinion, the relationship between man and woman here
is not on the level of good quality living...Relationships
are tensely formed and intensely fall apart... the impossibility
of joining with a partner.
V.D. The economisation of
sex... women become at some point prostitutes in their own
house, if they have sex and don't feel like it. Economy because
it's easier to live as a couple.
D.K. I think that art is
much more boring that sex. You know, all these nudes from
today and yesterday, and a hundered million years ago, are
boring compared with one most ordinary sex act.
M.C.
I in contrast think that photography causes direct
feelings.
V.D. I don't know why you
make such a mystery of sex. Sex is an everyday existential
thng, and I think there is no need to mystify it.
M.C. For some people it's
not everyday...
I.Z. My website is pure pornography.
D.K. Zlobec got connected
with 'amateurs', those are people which get naked and send
their photos around on the web, because it turns them on.
So he made contact with different people. That's the shift
between porn and art.
M.C. In my opinion art should
be demystified, and pornography does exactly that.
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Issues and Comments
What
were M.D., D.F., and D.K. doing in Brod Castle on V.D.'s
bed?
What does it mean to exhibit
in Slavonski Brod?
How important is the choice
of media for this artists?
Please
send any comments or responses to balen@galerijabalen.net
and we will post them on the site.
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