Jelena Pašić: Exhibition review – Weight at Gallery AŽ, 2021.
Writing his poetic-theoretical study on the ways we perceive and experience spaces, but also on how spaces shape our experience of the world, relationships and interactions, french philosopher Gaston Bachelard argued that there are two fundamental types of space: intimate space and outdoor space. This division creates a seemingly solid dialectical division into internal and external, into interior and exterior. Yet, in his major work, The Poetics of Space, Bachelard claims both of these opposing poles are essentially inseparable, interdependent. Without the external there is no internal, just as the internal – with all its symbolic matrix filled with concepts it connotes, such as intimacy, silence, protection and invisibility – does not exist unless we establish a boundary, a dividing line separating two binary concepts or two binary phenomena. To set this limit, however, according to Bachelard8, means to immerse oneself in the field of imagination, because the terms “internal” and “external” cannot be understood exclusively within their reciprocity; they are, on the contrary, interdependent and, in the words of the author, “united in identical expansion.”
The two spaces expand and contract, so – in the process and activities of such a poetic experience of the world – in the boundless spaciousness of the universe it is possible to experience harmony with the equally boundless intimate depth of being. “Giving an object its poetic space means giving it more space than it has in its objective and object characteristics,” Bachelard writes. In other words, the expansion of the intimate, the inner is possible even beyond the set boundaries that separate them. “It seems, therefore, that these two kinds of space – the space of intimacy and the space of the world – mix with their own ‘infinity’. Such a symbolic, poetic expansion of space that transcends or seemingly abolishes Euclidean laws and physical givens is a characteristic of the works of one of the most interesting domestic sculptors of the younger generation, Vladimir Novak. At his new exhibition at the AŽ Gallery in Zagreb, this author interrogates the notion of weight with three presented works, as the title of the exhibition says. “Weight” is understood not only as a physical, measurable quantity, but also as a symbolic field or, in Bachelard’s words, a poetic space in which common relations and real limitations are called into question. Symptomatically, at the entrance to the gallery located in the lobby of the former school in the industrial zone on the outskirts of Zagreb, where the art organization Ateliers Žitnjak has been operating for almost two decades, there is an inscription “Periphery Center”. Although this is an intervention carried out in 2009 by the artist Zoran Pavelić to point out the dichotomous and unequal relations between the center and the periphery, not only in geographical and urban terms, but also the power relations in the field of culture and art, with Vladimir’s exhibition Novak these words were given another layer of meaning. Namely, just as in Novak’s sculptures, so in the mentioned inscription, a new sphere emerges from the combination of disparate concepts, a new universe that transcends binary divisions.
Three exhibited sculptures, in one case a group of similar sculptures placed in the gallery space, materialized the sign of forces, the relationships of the objects, the material from which they have been made from, its mass and gravitational field, where individual elements of sculptures very graphically illustrate these forces or, on the contrary, they resist them and create a strange ambience that seemingly defies the laws of physics. The installation called “In / Out of Line” consists a metal pedestal with the mounted engine on it which sometimes lifts and strains, and sometimes relaxes and settles on the floor a long black strap hung on the opposite wall, otherwise used to secure the load, forming the layers of lines. In mechanically given movement and regular rhythms, two extremes alternate: the tension of the strap, which in a straight line stands parallel with the ground in just one second, and in the next moment this tension subsides and produces a concave curve in contact with the ground, again turning it into a rectilinear form. A work called “All in All,…”, a large, compact metal sculpture in the rectangular shape of a plate is placed with its side, narrower surface on supports with wheels. The relationship between load and support, mass and gravity is much more directly presented here, but the decision to place the monumental proportions in a more unstable way in relation to the pedestal creates a much more labile but impressive structure in which balance is fragile and its achievemen is possible in a specific, given position. The third segment of the exhibition consists of “Structures ¾”, three high metal panels placed on the walls around the gallery that break into the space with vertically placed surfaces resembling metal doors. Reflections of light are reflected on the polished surface of the metal, allowing the dark material to emphasize its still present quality of color texture. The grandiose forms of these sculptures, attached to the gallery walls, persistently insist on their autonomy and almost seem to deny the force of gravity.
Such research endeavors and the urge to experiment, to overcome the problem of balance and achieve dynamic harmony in sculpture are features of Novak’s artistic prose, and it is clear that he inherited this inclination from his mentor, Slavomir Drinković, whose sculptural forms were once criticized by art critic Ješa Denegri who claimed that they are “homogeneous in their apparent contradiction”, that “some energy always acts in these masses, some force is released which makes the mass alive, flexible, potentially mobile”. Inspired by the legacy of minimalism in sculpture, Novak contemplates and builds his works in a modern way, looking not only for optimal solutions and answers to construction problems he poses in the work process, but also thinking about what matter and object bring to a particular space – by its physical characteristics, as well as by its symbolic, semantic ones. It is not surprising, therefore, that he often realizes works as iterations, as modalities of possible answers to a posed problem or thesis. Thus, for example, “In / Out of Line” has been developed over the last three years, and was first presented at the Youth Salon in 2018, when it was awarded the Grand Prix under the title “≈ 30 Steps in Balance”. In 2017, he set up an ambient sculpture in the French Pavilion in Zagreb, which, following the postulates of land art and arte povera, places piles of long reed stalks in monumental and elegantly, minimalistically shaped metal containers. A combination of natural material, as a ready-made object taken over and placed in impressive installations, and a metal structures, organic and abstract, was set up next year in Osijek, where it symbolically referred to the ancient vitality of the river environment, and after that in Diocletian’s cellars in Split, on a site whose ancient origins gave the sculpture an almost archetypal expressive power.
Returning finally to Bachelard’s “Poetics of Space”, we could say that Novak is an author who expands space with his works – primarily in a conceptual sense, who seeks spatial poetry, and metaphorically transposes visitors to other, altered and alienated spaces, spaces of research and inventions. The shift occurs primarily in our imagination because, as Bachelard concludes, “we do not change the place, we change our own nature.”
Bojan Krištofić_foreword to the exhibition Weight, AŽ Gallery, 2019.
In addition to being one of the fundamental physical or natural forces, Weight is also the name of the exhibition by Vladimir Novak at AŽ Gallery, a sculptor of the younger generation who regularly questions and expands the possibilities of given exhibition spaces with his research-oriented works (from work to work, from place to place) and concepts and phenomena such as: body-mass, object-installation, object-sculpture, static-movement, light-shadow, performance (performance) -projection (presentation), still or moving (electronic) image… And all with a foundation in emphasizing the process as a crucial component of artistic and creative work in general, with a discreetly opened horizon and to present errors, deviations, doubts, confusions and generally, primarily, asking questions in the wake of their driving force of our imagination. Novak’s projects and exhibitions are much more than just seemingly intertwined, as the artist is primarily interested in the relationships and influences between materials and objects he chooses and shapes, sometimes sticking to a ready-made approach and sometimes deliberately overemphasizing the quantity placed in space, often in order to come to the quality of new monumentalities, which at the same time impressively reflect the boundaries and possibilities of the spaces in which he works, and contemporary sculpture in general. Novak is a traditionalist when it comes to very consistent non-abandonment of object-man-space relations, i.e. challenges that eternally intense connections between natural and built environment pose to man, and an experimenter in terms of transforming such connections with very diverse creative procedures, uniting them by leaning onto the great tradition of minimal art, both global and local-regional. Weight should therefore be taken as a new continuation of the author’s now highly profiled search, where AŽ Gallery unites three works, each in its own way questioning the gallery space of the former primary school hallway, roughly trying to determine whether it can withstand that Weight, and as a visible material presence, and literally as an invisible force.
In/Out of Line (2018-2021) is a new iteration of the work started in 2018 at the 34th Salon of Youth in the Galleries PM and Bačva HDLU Zagreb (than entitled ≈ 30 Steps in Balance) and continued the same year at the festival Device art 6.018 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (co-production: [KONTEJNER], Bureau of Contemporary Art Praxis). The electro-mechanical installation consists of a metal, minimalist pedestal machine and a black strap attached to the hallway wall, which is rotated by the programmed machine at different frequencies, transmitting an independent force acting perpendicular to the wall and giving the impression of limit testing its strength and stability. Structures 3/4 are a set of larger metal plates, shapeed as s meander, which in Novak’s earlier exhibitions already played various roles, and now appear for the first time as a relief, which is positioned so that it directs a kind of opposing force, then encouraging a dynamic ambient environment where the visitor is a ‘tongue on the scale’, i.e. the center of gravity to be ‘grounded’ against the forces that dominate space. On the opposite side of the hallway, visitors are greeted by All in all,… (2021), a monumental metal artefact that combines the characteristics of both sculpture and installation. Finally, with its inherent incompleteness, it emphasizes the concept of open hardware, necessary for setting up an exhibition that does not tend to be a rounded point, but rather a reflection of the amount of the undertaking needed to balance all the present forces – to make all gravity bearable, a force understandable to essentially limited human senses and consciousness.
Boris Greiner: Exhibition review – Installatrium at CEKAO Gallery, 2019.
The exhibition space of the CEKAO Gallery in the Zagreb Public Open University is one of the few that are not originally gallery spaces, but the gallery program manages to join the original purpose of the institutions to which they belong. As is the case with the VN Gallery and the Prozori Gallery, which connect their content to the library one, Vladimir Novak places his exhibition in the left corridor of the high ground floor of the Public Open University, which has similar characteristics to the mentioned galleries at libraries. The rooms have one glassed wall each. But while Prozori (windows) and VN Gallery face the street, the inner garden can be seen through the glass wall in the CEKAO gallery. It is possible to enter it, there is a door in the wall, also made of glass, which leads to the balcony, and even the stairs that lead down to the garden. The transparent wall separates the inner from the outer, which, given the configuration of the building, is actually internal, so it is a little harder to determine what is inside and what is outside.
Placing, it would be said, a key part of the in situ video installation right in the middle of the inner garden, which at the same time means or simulates the middle of the building, Novak refers to this difficult to define categorization, declaring the center to be the inner one. This is also emphasized by the fact of light, it is therefore the first, it comes from the center of the interior, just as our gaze or consciousness also comes from the same place. Well then in the field of view we see a projection of reality. Novak’s light, however, is not merely a symbolic interpretation of thinking about fundamental sculptural relations, nor is it the light bulb that, by its ignition, signifies a sudden idea. It is a battery of five extremely powerful rectangular reflectors, aimed at the exhibition hallway. The lights are blinding, especially since they are not even and uniform, but according to some principle they turn on and off at the same time or individually, so when they are on, they seem to flicker slightly. The first is the thought that these are signals, Morse’s or someone else’s. Placed in a line, the spotlights look as if they were delivered from some large platform, moreover, as if they have a very responsible task there, say to welcome guests from space, to tell them the first thing about us. Like butterflies attracted by light, we go out on the balcony, take a closer look at the platform, decipher the message and witness the encounter from the front row. We still don’t know that we have become actors in a film projected in an interior exhibition space, on a large screen, made for the occasion right next to the wall opposite the glass wall, whose left and right ends are slightly curved, so the screen looks like a cinemascope from former cinema halls. Spotlights become a projector, their light is projected on the screen, and we, just like everything else in between become shadows, our movements are printed on the canvas, the layout is random, the composition of the frame is realized in conjunction with a thin metal structure holding large glass surfaces. The flickering of light, however, produces horizontal light gray streaks, as if the TV were broken, and the rhythm of switching on gives a kind of strobe effect in moving the shadows, actually its caricature, since the changes are irregular, with considerable pauses. It is as if, following some unknown dramaturgical narrative, individual parts of the film have been cut out. The composition includes shadows of window frames that define parts of the frame. The distance from the projector results in darker and brighter, ie larger and smaller shadows that move in defined segments of the image or cancel these frames. The shadows move in a flickering space, seemingly in front of bright stripes of unknown origin in the background of the canvas, which overall contributes to the dynamism of the scene, so the same situation constantly generates effective variations.
This unusual experimental film was shot and projected at the same time, the actors are at the same time the spectators, the content is found in the process, which is at the same time its final form. And no matter how much that content was just a copy of reality, a context that includes a movie screen, directional projection light, a stylized image, and even the dynamics of events, it all proclaims it to be a film. And what puts it in that category is managing the visual message carrier. While, for example, for older experimental filmmakers, this carrier was a tape, and the result was achieved by intervening on it, in this case it is eliminated, and its role is taken over by light. By passing through space, an empty projection beam takes over the content it represents on the screen and thus becomes a carrier of information. While Peter Kubelka determined the duration of the sequence with a predefined length of film tape, with Novak it derives from an algorithm that determines the on and off of the spotlight.
So just as he solved the complex question of the inner and outer by the position of the reflector, so the image on the screen, as a kind of preview of our view, is actually a simulation of the transformation of reality into its stylized interpretation. The inclusion of exhibition format issues is also noticeable. With its set-up, and especially its intensity, the light installation first imposes itself as a key figure. Only then we realize that it is only part of a more complex installation that, pretending to use the space of the entire building, connects the exterior and interior, while changing its format into an interactive video installation. To which we add audio layer when the author hands us the headphones. We listen to a soundtrack recorded over ten years, Novak’s improvised jams, which, just like the picture, include distortions and recognizable lines. The headphones are wireless, they allow movement, they are not, therefore, the sound image of the film, but the sound conductor through the exhibition, applicable both to the dominant installation and to its other elements. The sound link seeks to take us through time, through the development of his authorial interest, and the material chosen as the leitmotif. So right at the entrance is a four-meter-long, massive iron console laid out on two columns of thin paper. At the top, somewhat sunken by the weight of the iron, the layers of paper still compensate for the weakness in number, one day it might give way, but supported by the others, it withstands the burden of the whole.
The raw contrast of this ready-made sculpture may seem like a homage to Jannis Kounellis, but it will also be associated with Novak’s earlier works where eternal iron appears in the service of carriers of bundles of dry, it would be said, temporary reeds. Which, on the other hand, could again be said to represent daily cut-outs, which only become a content with a firm decision.
The next stage communicates with the present, namely, a shelf or display case with glass surfaces and thin metal supports corresponds to the structure of the part of the building where we are located. It has rectangular blocks of dark material of different sizes, such as bricks or elements ready to be activated. Parts of the future puzzle can also be interpreted as a dedication to raw materials and structure, as a personal dialogue with the modernism of the building. Or as facing the affairs of the future with raw materials extracted from the layers of the past.
In the end, or as we find out, in the beginning, there was also light. Framing a period of ten years, next to the current light film, there is also, in a slightly smaller format, a projection of recorded lights from 2019, from which the story actually began. In the lower part of the frame, where the subtitle usually appears, there is now a white band that occasionally partially or completely disappears, reappears, until it disappears completely. It is a shot of an exhaled fluorescent lamp, taken in real time, following its last rattles.
In both cases, everything revolves around light, but while in the past it appeared as the content of the film, now it takes over all functions in its production, starting with the director’s conception, through dramaturgy and filming, to editing and projection. Everything but content, it becomes its by-product, the shadow. So as the presented exhibition unit has a very precise beginning, the dying of the fluorescent lamp, so the end is also precise, because the present is crucial for the content we are looking at.
In other words, to his sculptural interest in the raw material, perhaps persuaded by the dramatic testimony of the materialization of light, he adds the cinematic one, as iron is synonym for matter, so light is synonym for immateriality, they are equated at that level.
Or it is a group therapy of the audience by the already somewhat rejected method of syntonics, in which lights are directed into the patient’s eyes in order to resolve various physical and emotional problems; about a treatment also known as optometric phototherapy.