Third year in a row GMK is organizing “Tvornica” project as one of our core programs. In this project young artists chosen through an open call are given the opportunity to have their own exhibition with the institutional support provided by the Gallery. Nowadays, when state funding for independent culture is miserable, GMK tries to act as a catalyst and a development platform offering artists advisory and financial support much needed in the production of the new work. Once a year we have an open call for the production of new work open to artists up to 35 years that are willing to apply with works in their initial phase. After exhibitions by Iva Cepanec Masters in September 2014 and Ana Kuzmanić in December 2015, this year we have chosen the proposal titled “In Situ – missing objects” by Dora Đurkesac and Karla Paliska.
“In Situ – missing objects” is an artistic research primarily focused on processes and ways of perceiving our environment with further aim of creating new methodologies in researching space. Originating from sociological, cognitive and physical points of view, artists are interested in relations between existing concepts of space, but also their potentials and limits in describing new dynamics of their production.
Aim of the project is finding new articulations of urban and public spaces through active participation of their citizens. Urban and public space is not only perceived as a result of physical and social interactions and their relations, but also as a place of continuous transformation which emerges due to complex interconnection of technology, media, society and public space. In this emerging ecology, the role and the meaning of every factor – public space, urbanity, technological tools, new media – must be reconceptualized, taking into account possible ways of transforming processes of production of the public space.
Dora Đurkesac and Karla Paliska are interested in new virtual spaces and practices that can help us articulate, or even directly intervene and refine, public space recognizing a public sphere inside a public space. Their mission is questioning of every form of social interactions, experiences in a public space and possibilities of their translation into a virtual space. Researching existing, abstract, applied and maybe at first unrelatable concepts of space whilst producing new and speculative conceptions of space helps us deepen our understanding of it. Furthermore, their goal is to develop virtual experience platform which would enable citizens’ reflection and creation of new spaces/contents while real and virtual remain intertwined.
This exhibition represents the first phase of the project based on the contributions of the citizens and their rethinking of the environment around Gallery which will include different representations of space aimed on further development of a platform for rethinking and recreating public space.
The project is supported by: City of Zagreb, Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia, INA – Industrija nafte d.d. and EKS Scena Zagreb. Gallery is supported by Kultura Nova.
