The other reality - Croatian emerging painters

This generation of Croatian artists gave us a reason to start talking about painting again. They present their thoughts in a playful way, often supported by theoretical backgrounds, and hiding deeper and more complex meaning than it could be grasped at the first sight. While older generations focused their interests mostly on abstraction, both in motives of the paintings and motives for painting, today's emerging painters play with the figuration and possibilities that allow them to create different worlds.

The idea of showing the hidden or neglected queer history in order to put the present and the future in the rightful context is the focus of Helena Janecic's works. In this series she paints women living in the rural conservative surroundings and doing everyday housework while being happily involved in a lesbian relationship. In a witty and engaging manner, Helena speaks about the life in a village and links it with a personal fantasy thus creating the connection between the fictional and the real world.

Dino Zrnec deals with the idea of the past more directly, reminding of the socialist era by posing in front projections showing old socialist factories; he paints the scenes in the airily, almost transparent manner to stress out the absence of one's personal memory of such places. Nonetheless, his autobiographical approach, both in portraying himself and by sharing his personal memories, is more an adventure than seriously engaged political work.

As well as Dino, Mirna Kutlesa paints with an unusual lightness using a whole specter of symbols in her paintings. Emphasizing that the world is a wildness which should be discovered and tamed, by putting the people in the wild she discovers her own way to show us the long forgotten but newly rediscovered human freedom.

Both Ivona Juric and Martina Grllic have a quiet introspective approach to painting. While in Ivona's paintings that insight is amplified with the cycle called "A minute of silence in a day" where she paints trees and plants, the symbols of ever existing life, Martina paints scenes from everyday life happening during the moment of the detonation of an atomic bomb. And just as we are unaware of the quiet life that pulsates in plants, we are unaware of an explosion that swifts the whole life leaving all in the misty dust.

Sebastijan Dracic thoughtfully uses various elements to create the specific atmosphere of a certain space, would it be interior or exterior, and often plays with the feeling of absence within the painting. This time, Sebastijan presents the old stories and human believes on the theme of the end of the world. By painting trees in a forest he actually talks about the life cycle, about the trees that regenerate, lost from sight in the group of many.

Both him and Rene Bachrach Kristofic use literature, films, and music to conduct ideas from an abstract thought into a final work. Rene also deals with The End, looking on it from a very personal perspective. Almost sketch alike, he uses the different formats to create the polyptychs, and gives the viewer a choice, almost like a story with multiple endings, to navigate the work in its own way.

At first site, Pavle Pavlovic uses an easy-going fun approach to painting, playing with human figures and elements, which tell us some long-forgotten story or set us, back to childhood. In spite of it, his painting approach is all but superficial; the concentration and the precision he uses to build those compositions give a touch of the real, making us believe that the story could be personally ours.

Curator: Maja Rozman

The other reality
Croatian emerging painters
On stage: narrative and performance in contemporary Croatian video
Kurator: Maja Rozman

Künstler: Sebastijan Dracic, Martina Grllic, Rene Bachrach Kristofic, Mirna Kutlesa, Pavle Pavlovic, Dino Zrnec.