Ory Dessau / 2014

Artist Zlatko Kopljar was invited to present his vertical-rectangular brick structures in the circular space of The Barrel Gallery in Zagreb. The structures are made with a particular kind of bricks, manufactured during World War Two in Jasenovac camp, outside Zagreb, by prisoners.

After the war the people from the surrounding villages were taking those bricks and used them as building blocks for their houses. Eventually, Kopljar decided to keep the space empty and constructed the structures, brick by brick, in front of the building, around the fountain. The following text is written in the form of a personal letter, which I delivered to Kopljar on the evening of the opening.   

Dear Zlatko, I decided to write you this personal letter because I cannot simply inhabit a critical external standpoint in relation to your work. When it comes to K19, being a Jewish Israeli, third generation of survivors, makes it impossible for me to judge and interpret it from the outside. My thoughts are moving around and go back and forth to many different directions, when associated with your K19, which I find ethical as much as conceptual, a personal gesture as much as a theoretical gesture. One of the directions my thoughts go through includes a story I want to share with you on architect Louis Kahn and his 1968 revolutionary proposal for the restoration of the ruined Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish quarter of old Jerusalem, a proposal that was never put into effect, that remained a pure concept. The Hurva synagogue was founded in the early 18th century by followers of Judah he-Hasid, but it was destroyed by Muslims a few years later in 1721. The plot lay in ruins for over 140 years and became known as the Ruin, or Hurva in hebrew. In 1864, the Perushim, a local Jewish sect, rebuilt the synagogue, and although officially named the Beit Yaakov Synagogue, it retained its name as the Hurva, the ruin. It became Jerusalem’s main Ashkenazi synagogue, until it too was deliberately destroyed by the Arab Legion after the withdrawal of the Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

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Nataša Lah / 2014

The recently-created spatial installation K 19 by visual artist Zlatko Kopljar, set up in downtown Zagreb, is directed through its meaning and content towards the remembrance of Holocaust victims. The installation consists of five sculptures, which are made from the bricks originally used to build the walls of the concentration camp at Jasenovac and then re-used for the construction of post-war houses. These same bricks have now been used to create the K 19 sculptures, which have been placed on bases created from standardized Euro-pallets used in construction.

Laid into horizontal courses, the bricks form vertical blocks with irregular upper surfaces, and, at the same time, place fragments of a fictitious whole in a semi-circular spatial ring of a monument-like character. Starting with the observation that the installation K 19 documents a specific historical situation possessing an unrepresentable narrative, the aim of the article is to demonstrate that this does not betray the nature of the medium chosen for this artwork. The article’s theory-based argument is rooted in a number of different interpretative strategies which study the anchoring of cultural representations in artworks by considering them as ethical concepts which are inscribed in a space. The article also highlights the processes of cognitive mapping within the set frame of a moral geography, as well as emphasizing the coupling of the contingency and conceptualization of heritage, but also the mnemopoetic perspectivism and intersubjective character of similar representations. By encouraging the meeting between “the seen and the read” as the meeting between “the visible and the expressible”, the article points to the effects of fictionalization and theatricalization which are present in this installation.

Read More “Installation K19 by Zlatko Kopljar – Inscription of an Ethical Concept in Space”

Ivana Mance / 2014

Zlatko Kopljar (born in 1962), artist and performer, author of video films, installations and performances, has been active on the Croatian arts scene since the early 1990s. Lately, he has mostly been exhibiting his works abroad. Despite the fact that in the past two decades of his work his artistic expression has profiled itself as being polyvalent in terms of media, it is still primarily based on performance. In short, this means that Kopljar participates in most of his works as a performer, whether one-off performances, staged photographs or directed movies.

Read More “Lucifer’s Shame”

Kate Mayne / 2010

Kopljar’s work has always contained codes of communication that do not get across to the viewer, or at least not completely. His work does not readily communicate rationally or intellectually in plain language or through visual representation. What does get across, however, is the overriding content of his work, leaving the viewer with an effect, a feeling of emotion that is conveyed through the works’ physicality and imagery. It is similar, for example, to someone who does not understand Italian, but is nevertheless moved by a passionate recitation in that language. The content of Kopljar’s message is gauged through the sound and rhythm of its delivery. For when processing information, we do not rely solely on our rational faculty; the information also appeals to our perceptual abilities.

Read More “Wandering between light and incomprehension”

Vladimir Mattioni / 2010

Najdojmljivije panorame gradova obilježene su mnoštvom tornjeva svake vrste – od povijesnih zvonika i fortifikacijskih kula do nebodera i tvorničkih dimnjaka. Skoro je nezamisliva reprezentativna panorama koja ne sadrži barem nekolicinu građevina koje izrastaju iz tla i teže prema nebu.

Read More “Identitet – Ritual – Metafora”