28/07/2023

Constellations

Ben Cain, Jasmina Cibic, Licio Debeljuh, Matija Debeljuh, Igor Eškinja, Petra Feriancova, Alen Floričić, Foam - Maja Kuzmanović & Nik Gaffney, Igor Grubić, Tina Gverović, Ibro Hasanović, Vlatka Horvat, Kristian Kožul, Marko Lulić, David Maljković, Damir Očko, Lala Raščić, Dragana Sapanjoš, SofijaSilvia, Mladen Stropnik, Silvo Šarić , Marko Tadić, Dino Zrnec

29/07/2023 - 15/09/2023

With the exhibition Constellations, Apoteka – Space for Contemporary Art celebrates its tenth anniversary. Apoteka is co-founded by Branka Benčić (curator) and Matija Debeljuh (visual artist) and established in 2013 in an abandoned pharmacy in Vodnjan (Istria, Croatia).

Conceived as an exhibition, encounter, and event, Constellations create a network of relationships, building upon the continuity of previous program concepts that have addressed artistic practices through long-term exhibition series in Vodnjan, such as “Temporary Encounters” and “This is Not a Museum.” Additionally, projects like “Cinemaniac/Thinking Film” or “Invisible Savičenta” were Apoteka’s attempts to articulate the local context in which it operates, its own position, and the strategy of the artistic organization. The unique space of the abandoned pharmacy soon became a new place for encounters and dialogues about contemporary art and saw over forty exhibitions featuring more than 50 artists.

The concept of constellations refers to the mutual position or arrangement of celestial bodies. In a figurative sense, it signifies a layout, arrangement; a combination of circumstances, an opportunity; a position, a situation.

By bringing together a selection of artists who have exhibited at Apoteka over the past decade, the exhibition forms a meeting point for recent contemporary art production, institutional critique, artist-as-curator practices, and a dialogue between works that engage the potential of artistic imagination. Like a red thread running through the exhibition programs, methods, and contexts that frame artistic production and organizational conditions, the artists examine metareferential and self-referential moments that draw attention to the relationship with the exhibition space and location, cultural production, and the local context. Directed towards reflection and criticality of the art system and art institutions, Constellations represent a programmatic gesture that underlines the reconfiguration of cultural and artistic production relations within the field of institutional relationships and positions. It also questions the positions, possibilities, tactics of exhibition and work to explore the domain of institutional development, potentials, projections, criticality, and the potential for imagination.

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