recent works by damir sobota
introduction to the exhibition
by janka vukmir
(scroll down for the Croatian text)
Damir Sobota is the winner of the 2020 Radoslav Putar Award, an award for artists in Croatia up to 40 years of age. This 19th edition of the Award was also the first to be held in epidemiological circumstances, with the jury meeting being held online and hybrid for the first time. Giuliana Carbi Jesurun from Trieste Contemporanea was also a member of the jury that year, as one of the few members of the jury who participated in several of its convocations during its twenty-year history. And so has happened that the meeting of the jury and the artist unexpectedly led to an exhibition that had not been previously planned, which we are looking forward to openining. Although again, due to epidemiological reasons and delays, the exhibition is now finally realized with an 18-month delay from the originally planned date. In Trieste Sobota presents works that were exhibited at the final exhibition of the Radoslav Putar Award 2020 in Split, but also are added some recent works that were created after his residency in the Residency Unlimited program in New York and were recently exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Zagreb, which, as the founder of the Award, uses to organize a solo exhibition by all its winners.
Read here the presentation by curator Janka Vukmir (available also in Croatian).
Damir Sobota is an artist whose interest is concentrated around the possibilities and systems of geometry in the construction of artworks. In Croatia, there is a huge national corpus of works created within the framework of abstraction starting from the 1950s and the works of artists from the EXAT 51 group, which was upgraded over the decades to include exhibitions embraced by the New Tendencies, and later through elementary and primary painting and post-conceptual works from the 70s and on. Sobota, of course, without rejecting domestic sources, is primarily related to the geometric abstraction of international provenance. Born in 1988, he certainly accessed via Internet relevant information and literature and, firstly of course, through his education at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts.
His works, as he says, are created in series. Each series concentrates on a few questions, problems or challenges that he asks himself, and that make him decide in advance on the system he will apply to realize the works. He takes decisions based on research, but also intuitively, as he ultimately performs the work.
At Studio Tommaseo, he presents works from two series: Palindrome series – which he premiered in 2020 in Zagreb and which he later exhibited at the Radoslav Putar Award exhibition Finale 2020! in Split – and Systemic Paintings and Objects series – which he presented at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Zagreb upon his return from his residency in New York. For the exhibition in Trieste from the Palindrome series we singled out achromatic polyptychs of paintings / collages. The paintings consist of three separate elements that together form a whole, but in each individual element there is a legible geometric concept of congruence, which, like the linguistic palindrome, reads the same backward or forward. The collage paper was cut and glued in several layers making a balanced but not an identical mirror composition. Also, although they act as a binary composition of positives and negatives, of black and white, each image actually carries multiple tones of grey, blue and ochre.
In the works that composed at the end of 2021 the Systemic Paintings and Objects exhibition held at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Sobota is further developing his interests. The former interest in coloured field, minimalism, geometry, surface or line, now continues with questions of dimensionality and space. In the series of Systemic Paintings and Objects the congruence is only fictional: a reflection of the lines on a reflective, mirroring plexiglass. Machine-made objects bring their industrial anonymity to the works, but, as they return on their surface the image of the environment, visitors find themselves part of the exhibited object, and tucked among its leaves together with the gallery space itself. When I speak of “leaves”, it comes to my mind to associate them to Vojin Bakić’s Razlistane forme (leafy forms), except that Sobota does not speak with the surface but with the edge of the object, which gives concavity and convexity while to the surface are given only lines transmitted by reflection. Although these 3D works could function independently, on specially made pedestals that correspond to the shape of the object itself, they act and respond to the actual continuing lines of objects on the wall. Sobota presents these works on the wall as paintings, but in fact they are collages and even low reliefs on paper glued to MDF board, mimetically painted with wall paint to blend, into the gallery, with the surroundings. Although they are collages, these objects still are reliefs, and paintings (even if they are “collaged” reliefs and paintings). They evoke sotto voce the art history of white monochromes by Ben Nicholson, Agnes Martin, Lucio Fontana and a number of other artists who have dealt with the concept of space. All these objects are placed in the gallery so that, while they are approached, they offer different views in motion in which they intertwine and foster a systematic approach to their geometric components. The works thus gain certain processuality, movement and time, but also the traits of a game – and visitors, if they wish to be in it, may find their own key for reading works and interrelationships.
Novi radovi
Damir Sobota
Damir Sobota dobitnik je Nagrade Radoslav Putar, nagrade za umjetnike u Hrvatskoj do 40 godina starosti, 2020. godine. To njezino 19. izdanje bilo je i prvo koje se održalo u epidemiološkim okolnostima, pri čemu se i žiriranje po prvi puta održavalo online i hibridno. Te je godine članica žirija bila i Giuliana Carbi iz Trieste Contemporanea, kao jedna od malobrojnih članova žirija koji su tijekom dvadesetogodišnje povijesti nagrade u žiriranju sudjelovali u nekoliko njegovih saziva. I tako se dogodilo se ono čemu se uvijek radujemo, da susret žirija i umjetnika neočekivano dovede do izložbe koja nije ranije bila planirana. Iako opet, zbog epidemioloških razloga i odgađanja, izložba se konačno realizirala s 18 mjeseci kašnjenja od prvobitno planiranog termina. Na njoj Sobota predstavlja radove koji su bili izloženi na finalnoj izložbi Nagrade Radoslav Putar 2020. godine u Splitu, ali i s novim radovima, koji su nastali nakon rezidencijalnog boravka u programu Residency Unlimited u New Yorku, te su nedavno bili izloženi i u Institutu za suvremenu umjetnost u Zagrebu, koji kao osnivač Nagrade svim njezinim dobitnicima priređuje samostalnu izložbu.
Damir Sobota umjetnik je čiji interes je koncentriran oko mogućnosti i sistema geometrije u konstrukciji likovnih djela. U Hrvatskoj postoji golemi nacionalni korpus radova nastalih u okvirima apstrakcije počevši od pedesetih godina prošlog stoljeća i radovima umjetnika iz grupe EXAT 51 koji se tijekom daljih desetljeća nadograđivao kroz razdoblje koje obuhvaćaju izložbe Novih tendencija, a kasnije kroz elementarno i primarno slikarstvo te post-konceptualne radove od 70ih godina nadalje, Sobota je naravno, ne odbacujući domaće izvore, ipak primarno vezan uz geometrijsku apstrakciju međunarodne provenijencije. Rođen 1988., imao je dakako na raspolaganju dostupne informacije i literaturu kakvu je omogućio ne samo Internet, i naravno, školovanje na zagrebačkoj Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti.
Njegovi radovi, kako sam kaže, nastaju u serijama. Svaka serija koncentrirana je oko nekoliko pitanja, problema ili izazova koje si sam zadaje, i unaprijed odlučuje o sistemu koji će primijeniti napri realizaciji radova. Odluke donosi temeljem istraživanja, ali i intuitivno, kako na koncu izvodi radove.
U Studio Tommaseo, predstavlja radove iz dvije serije, Palindrom, koju je premijerno predstavio 2020. godine u Zagrebu i s kojom je nastupio na izložbi Finale 2020! Nagrade Radoslav Putar u Splitu, te serijom Sistemske slike i objekti, koju je predstavio u Institutu za suvremenu umjetnost u Zagrebu po povratku s rezidencijalnog boravka u New Yorku.
Za izložbu u Trstu iz serije Palindrom izdvojili smo akromatske poliptihe slika/kolaža. Slike se sastoje od tri odvojena elementa koji zajedno čine cjelinu, ali je i u svakom pojedinačnom elementu čitljiv geometrijski koncept sukladnosti, koji se kao i jezični palindrom može čitati s početka i s kraja jednako. Kolažirani papir izrezivan je i lijepljen u više slojeva čineći uravnoteženu, ali ne sasvim identičnu zrcalnu kompoziciju. Također, iako djeluju kao binarna kompozicija pozitiva i negativa, crnog i bijelog, svaka slika zapravo nosi više tonova sivog, plavog i okera.
Svoje interese Sobota razvija dalje i u radovima na izložbi Sistemske slike i objekti krajem 2021. u Institutu za suvremenu umjetnost. Raniji interes za obojeno polje, minimalnost, geometriju, plohu ili liniju, sada nastavlja pitanjima dimenzionalnosti i prostora. U seriji Sistemskih slika i objekata, sukladnost je samo fikcionalna, ona je odraz linija na reflektirajućem, špiglirajućem pleksiglasu. Strojno izrađeni objekti donose radovima svoju industrijsku anonimnost, međutim kako u svoju površinu uvlače sliku okoline, svaki posjetilac izložbe nađe se dijelom objekta, uvučen među njegove listove, kao i sam prostor galerije. Kad već spominjem razlistanost, spomenut ću, kao asocijaciju i Razlistane forme Vojina Bakića, samo što Sobota ne govori površinom, već rubom objekta, kojemu daje konkavnost i konveksnost, dok površini dodjeljuje samo liniju koji dalje prenosi refleksija. Iako bi mogli samostalno funkcionirati, na posebno izrađenim postamentima koji korespondiraju s formom objekta samoga, oni korespondiraju s objektima na zidu, gdje se zapravo linija s objekta i nastavlja. Sobota te objekte na zidu predstavlja kao slike, ali oni su zapravo kolaži, pa čak i plitki reljefi od papira na MDF ploči, mimetički obojani bojom za zid, da bi se izloženi u galeriji stopili s okolinom. Iako su kolaži, ti objekti su i dalje reljefne, kolažirane slike. One sotto voce prizivaju povijest umjetnosti bijelih monokroma, Bena Nicholsona, Agnes Martin, Lucia Fontane i niza drugih umjetnika koji su se bavili konceptom prostora. Svi su ovi objekti postavljeni u galeriji tako, da dok im se pristupa, u pokretu nude različite vizure u kojima se oni međusobno isprepliću i nude vizure koje otkrivaju sistemski pristup geometrijskim elementima radova. Radovi time dobivaju izvjesnu procesualnost, pokret i vrijeme, ali i igru u kojoj svaki posjetitelj može pronalaziti vlastiti ključ za čitanje djela i njihovih međusobnih odnosa, ako želi participirati.