Concrete object, 15 x 30 x 150 cm

A larger model in the exhibition has the shape of an open-ended tunnel. In the larger, life-size sculpture it represents, people will be able to walk into it at both ends. Advancing into the shaft, they will become enveloped by darkness, until they come to what feels like a wall, which has a vertical slit from top to bottom. The opening onto the tunnel’s other side, its mirror image, is so narrow, it would not really be possible to see who is standing in other side of the tunnel. Only light and sound would pass through to give people on both sides a notion of the other’s presence.

Read More “K22 Failure / 2019”

Bronze cast, silver-plated / MoMA NY, 20 x 17,5 x 80 cm / TATE Modern, 60 x 40 x 33 cm

Art, as the self-appointed heiress of religion, has adopted the forces and claims that once distinguished religious images: aura, truth, unconditionality, sovereignty of interpretation. Their sacrosanct status is transferred here to the image plane of former religious reliquaries: the cover, however, is firmly sealed.

Full HD video loop / Concrete object 1,  34,5 x 42,3 x 34,5 cm / Concrete object 2, 36 x 53,5 x 36 cm

I do not think I know another contemporary Croatian artist whose works evoke a feeling of terror with such ease. As far as I know, Zlatko Kopljar does not like to interpret his works and even when he does so, he never analyses their particular elements or reveal hidden allusions, except those that are explicitly laid in front of the viewer and are more or less universally graspable. However, from his very first to his most recent, his works resist any unambiguous interpretation; they do not presume the viewer’s intellectual receptiveness, but immerse them into an intensive experience of things such as impotence, anxiety, the feeling of guilt and responsibility, the impossibility to communicate, loneliness, deafening silence, unbearable noise, fear, the proximity of death, sadness, anger, compassion, redemption and the likes. Kopljar has developed his whole career around receptiveness to strong emotions, conditions and presentiments, materialising it outside his own self by using a wide range of media from performances, gestures, video works, objects, poetic utterances, sound, narration and the combination of all those, but never has he – except in one case, the case of “compassion” – explicitly named them.  Read More “K21 Random Empty / 2017”

Full HD video loop / K20 Empty MoMA NY, concrete object 20 x 17,5 x 80 cm / K20 Empty TATE Modern, concrete object 60 x 40 x 33 cm

Although presented in slightly unexpected forms, the works from the new series by Zlatko Kopljar, Empty, do not shift away from his basic and well-recognized artistic preoccupation. Whatever the subject matter of his works or projects may be, and regardless of whether it is a performance, video-film or another media form, Kopljar’s concern, or to be

Read More “K20 Empty / 2015”

Color inkjet prints

Die Walküre, WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen

Read More “WWV 86B / 2015”