BW photographs
Zlatko Kopljar presented himself to Zagreb viewers (the 1992 “Sacrifices” exhibition at the Cekao Gallery) in a surprisingly mature and complete artistic form. Making use of the ritual gestures from the Old Testament (sacrifice, cleansing, purification), as well as of the materials characterized by great interpretative potential (blood, honey),
Kopljar created the Biblical quartet of sin-sacrifice-absolution-purification. Such a thematic choice derived from a philosophical contemplation of ethical problems regarding a person’s relation to God, to other persons, to himself/herself, and to art. Althouth it certainly manifested the artist’s innermost feelings, it ought to be mentioned that the exhibition came to be in the disturbing times of personal and general spiritual upheavals. In figurative sense, the four columns of the exhibition stand for the four questions: the power of sin, the size of sacrifice, the possibility of absolution and the way of purification, A careful execution, the whiteness of space, and just a few drops of blood evoke purgatory, emphasizing the sacred atmosphere which fits the spiritual aspect of the exhibition like a glove. Serving as a counterpoint to the restrained and antiseptically treated space is the passionate monolog of the mad prophet from the 1983 movie “Nostalgia” by Andrei Arsenievich Tarkovsky, printed in the catalog in Italian and Croatian, with the insert in Braille. A ghost of liberated passion, yearning and suffering is the single piercing cry among the exhibits chained by form.