Exhibition opening: Suite for Masses

➮ Opening: 3/06/2025 (Tuesday), 7 PM
➮ Entrance is free
➮ GMK, Ulica Pavla Šubića 29

The exhibition remains on view until June 17, 2025, and can be visited Tuesday to Friday from 4 to 7 PM, and on Saturdays from 10 AM to 1 PM.

The exhibition Suite for the Masses brings together works by artists of different generations, media, and aesthetic positions, including brothers Miles, Tošo Dabac, Peter Handke, Vlado Martek, Vjekoslav Majcen, Vatroslav Mimica, Milan Pavić, Neša Paripović, Ivan Standl, Claude Lévi-Strauss and anonymous authors. Curated by Klaudio Štefančić, the exhibition explores the relationship between the individual and the masses, emphasizing that artistic tradition might help us imagine a society in which neither the idea of personal freedom nor that of community is at risk.

From the exhibition text:

The first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, [is that humans] must be in a position to live in order to be able to “make history”. But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing that cannot exist without the means of production and the means of communication, which makes the base of a society. People are, therefore, interdependent materialistically, through their needs and through the means of production. It is their interdependence, which constantly takes on new forms, that makes history. Individuality was produced within the context of the materialistic means of production, at the heart of social life, during Modernism –  the first period in history to see its expansion. It was Modernism that enabled humans to expand and deepen their subjectivity, rationality and sensibility…

In their early works, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels outlined the Marxist philosophy and were among the firsts to notice the process of transformation of population into social masses. Paris and Manchester were among the cities leading the process of industrialization and the development of new socioeconomic relations It was in Paris and Manchester respectively that Marx and Engels underwent the decisive experiences that led them to believe that human liberation could be achieved only through understanding and changing the social means of production.

A constant growth of production and consumption, together with a rapid growth of the cities, gave birth to new social classes. Contrary to the popular belief that social masses were potentially dangerous social phenomenon, Marx did not see the masses as a side product of history, but as the proletariat devoid of social consciousness. Both Marx and Engels saw masses as beacons of future emancipation, as potential political power that, after empowering the proletariat first, would push the society towards the future in which class relations would be overcome and humans would finally be free. 

(…)

The exhibition “The Suite for Masses” was inspired by the need to find a way to put a symbolic social communication together with what Marx referred as social practice – belief that representational regimes and sign systems should always be tested against social practices since they are more fundamental than those regimes and systems. This exhibition offers several aspirational readings with a purpose of shedding a new light on artistic and cultural objects that have been interpreted formulaically for a long time.

Using various artefacts – literature, art, film, photography, design – the exhibition strives to draw attention to social processes that must have had a profound and overwhelming impact on individuals, artists in particular, regardless of whether those processes took part in metropolitan centres or on periphery, in the conditions of the capitalist or the socialist economy. Although geopolitical processes of modernization did not take the shortest route nor moved at the same pace, they nevertheless changed people’s lives irreversibly. 

Klaudio Štefančić

The exhibition Suite for the Masses is dedicated to the theme of movement and is part of the ongoing project The Inner Museum (Unutarnji muzej – UM). Two exhibitions have previously been held within this framework: Every Tree Stands and Thinks (2015, Galerija Galženica, Velika Gorica) and Everyone Stands in Someone Else’s Light (2016, Galerija Galženica, Velika Gorica).

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Special thanks to: Udruga Bijeli val, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Nina Bačun, Una Popović (Muzej savremene umetnosti, Beograd), Ivana Janković (Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb), Aleksandra Berberih Slana (Muzej grada Zagreba), Dubravka Stančec (Muzej grada Zagreba), Seid Serdarević (Fraktura, Zagreb), Svjetlost (Sarajevo), Olga Majcen Linn, Lucija Zore (Hrvatski državni arhiv), anonymous netizens

We kindly thank the following institutions and individuals for lending works:

Zagreb City Museum
Milan Pavić, First Major Rally in Zagreb, May 13, 1945
Milan Pavić, First Major Rally in Zagreb (Freedom after WWII), May 13, 1945

Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
Neša Paripović, NP 1977, 8mm, 22’20’’

Croatian State Archives
Vatroslav Mimica, Monday or Tuesday, 1966

Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb / Tošo Dabac Archive
Tošo Dabac, Meeting, 1938
Tošo Dabac, Ilica, 1932–35
Tošo Dabac, Carpenter, 1932–35
Tošo Dabac, Sokol Members Preparing for a Performance, 1934

Vlado Martek
Even a Worker Can Be a Baudelairean, 2002 (co-signed: M. Proust – V. Martek)