Oris House of Architecture, Zagreb
13.04. – 22.04.2017
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.
