On Saturday, June 21, starting at 8 PM, at Apoteka – Space for Contemporary Art (Trgovačka 20, Vodnjan), the opening of the exhibition Spectrum by Vlado Zrnić will take place, followed by a screening of the film A Day in the Sun at 9:30 PM.
The exhibition will remain open to visitors until July 18.
The prominent Croatian visual artist and filmmaker Vlado Zrnić is presenting himself for the first time to the Istrian public with the exhibition Spectrum at Vodnjan’s Apoteka. After graduating in painting from Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in 1989, he returned to his home country and soon came out with several painting series, mostly focusing on human body posture against an undefined and vibrant painted backdrop. The colourism, gesturality and stratification of the rapidly painted background is juxtaposed to the accentuated monumentality of the figure to which a series of applied signs and symbols provides almost a totemic character. Varying and redefining his visual vocabulary, Zrnić gets closer and closer to the symbolic speech of animalistic origin, which he would accomplish, gradually abandoning painting, by making objects and installations in which he subtly uses both animal and plant textures. Delving into the insatiable human exploitation of animals for commercial purposes, the author speaks the language of high ecological awareness he still owns, and simultaneously he pays increasingly more attention to the dying humanism. These subject matters are the narrative patterns of almost all of his videos and films, to which he dedicated himself entirely in the nineties, formally abandoning painting. Formally, because in fact Zrnić only added movement to the static image and continued to paint in his films as well, to which their accentuated visual quality, structurally and hierarchically more important than the plot and linear narrative, clearly testifies. A proof of fine visual refinement and poetic documentary qualities of Zrnić’s cinema is also the film A Day unde the Sun, an integral part of this exhibition. In it, one notices another expressive quality of this author – light. The opening close-up of the film depicts lighting a candle with a match and that way light becomes a driving force of the film and remains one of its leading roles. Particularly impressive are the images of a clash between rays of sun and water, which compose a visual rhapsody underlined by light refractions; this optical phenomenon is the topic of the recent and here exhibited collage painted drawings. The visual effect of light passing through the camera lens is something Zrnić meets almost on a daily basis while making his films. The colour spectrum created by such refraction increasingly intrigued him, to the point that he finally decided to reinterpret it in another medium, which also meant the author’s return to painting. Of which he says, Light refraction in the form of linear extensibility of chromatic circles served to develop an idea of a spectral series, its geometry and wondrous symmetry. In the visual sense, it is an abstract principle of form and shape, the source of all the existing motifs and, also, a measure of the visible and invisible world around us. Almost a hundred years ago, Joseph Albers, one of the most significant avant-garde artists of the 20th century, adhered to the similar principles, and in his geometric-minimalist expression particularly addressed the origin and relations of colours. He published his extensive experiences in colour experimentation in 1963 in the book Interaction of Colour. In it he also concludes that colour is almost never seen the way it is and that it constantly deceives. Such ideas firmly stem from the laws of physics because a spectrum is created by the passing of white light through a prism, i.e. its diffusion (transformation) into primary (blue, yellow, red) and secondary (green, orange, purple) colours, which occurs in nature with rainbows in the skies. Zrnić reinterprets this passing moment with series of mostly diagonally arranged minute collages, which he makes from strips cut out of plastic foil on square, rectangular or round formats made out of polycarbonate fibres. The choice of the plastic material is not an accident because it accentuated light reflections. Glass is avoided because it would be too direct a reminder of a prism and also produce additional light refractions and unwanted reflections. After all, plastic, as a completely artificial material, is also chosen as a counterbalance to the natural phenomenon the author addresses. With this cycle, Zrnić achieved a colourist-poetic minimalism of a transcendental aura, since the colour spectrum is a cosmic phenomenon, abstract, non-gravitating and intangible. It is hence logical that its visual interpretation should be accomplished in minimalist, geometrically close forms since it is what divides the world into living and dead, physical and metaphysical, natural and cosmic. It is no accident that Albers uses geometry to analyse and dissect colour, just like now Vlado Zrnić resorts to certain minimalist principles, simultaneously creating a synthesis between the cinematic and the painterly experience, never ceasing to equilibrate on the thin line between the static and the moving image coloured by light.
Mladen Lučić
A Day in the Sun
A Day in the Sun is a 75-minute meditative film essay that follows a day in the life of people, animals, and nature in and around the city of Zadar. The film is entirely shot on film stock and documents the everyday activities of the local population. Zrnić does not conduct interviews with the protagonists nor does he connect scenes through traditional narrative structure, as he is primarily interested in the visual impression.
We see scenes of a nighttime storm, salt harvesters, shepherds chasing runaway sheep, or simply the flow of fresh and saltwater—connected solely by cinematic elements such as framing, editing, scene color, and music composed by Iztok Turk (known for his work with Laibach and Videosex) and Olivera Dubroja.
The film had its world premiere in 2000 in the official competition of Amsterdam’s IDFA and was later screened worldwide—from Zakynthos, Greece, to New York—to very positive reviews and comparisons to renowned films like Baraka by Ron Fricke.
The film was directed and written by Vlado Zrnić, produced by Miho Zrnić-Marinović, with cinematography by Silvio Jesenković and Boris Poljak, and editing by Olivera Dubroja.
Vlado Zrnić (Sarajevo, 1959)
In 1989, he graduated in painting from the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venice, Italy.
In 1994, he completed a specialization at the C.W. Post Campus (Brooklyn University), NY, USA.
Since 1998, he has been a professor (PhD in art, associate professor) at the Department of Film and Video, Academy of Arts, University of Split.
In 2017, he earned a PhD in the history and theory of art from the University of Zadar.
He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. Recipient of several awards and recognitions. Actively engaged in film and video art.