Vlado Martek - Limits language

The exhibition of Croatian artist Vlado Märtke, poetic experiments will be devoted to the artist, for whom poetry is an important starting point in discovering the infinite potential of the language in the visual arts. Vlado Martek, an artist born in Zagreb, who studied at the University of literature and philosophy, he abandoned writing traditional poetry to visual arts in 1974. In the years 1975-1978 he was a member of the informal Group of Six Authors (Group Šestorice author / Group of Six Authors) , which contributed significantly to the formation of the concept of "pre-poetry". This is a key theory for all the work Märtke, who in one of his most important works, created from fragments of half pencils, declares: "I am not a poet, because if I wanted to, could it be" (I'm not a poet because if I want I could be, 1982). Since the mid-70s Martek began to combine in his work a poetic and artistic activities, penetrating the border of language and visuality, exploring nature and matter of speech, or examining ways of formation / creation of (a) meanings. The artist constantly exceeded the boundaries, situating his work in the space "between" leaving work in process "arising", which for him is more important than the final result - closed and consistent composition. The exhibition will be works in which the artist in different ways reaches the boundaries of language, initiating dialogues with the tradition of poetry, including a visual poetry (Apollinaire, Mallarme, Baudelaire, Mayakovsky), creating poetic objects (poetski objekti), pre-poetry, art books (author's knjiga), samizdat, geographical maps.