OPENING NIGHT: Friday, 21 May 2021, 9 p.m.
Club Kocka Gallery, Youth Center Split, Ulica Slobode 28
The exhibit is open until Friday, May 28th.
Viewings can be arranged by contacting the following number: +385989602701.
ABOUT THE WORK:
LITTLE PRANKS AND BIG PASSIONS
Predrag Pavić is a man of a thousand passions. Everything he does, thinks or feels, he approaches with immense ardour. He takes it to the extremes. If he loves something, he loves it without holding back. If he can’t stand something, he expresses it clearly. Brutally and honestly. There is no room for subtle nuances between these two attitudes. Rarely does he see something with indifference. Things that don’t matter to him can simply stop existing. As a matter of fact – for him, they are non-existent.
Discussions with Predrag are especially interesting. When defending his points, he won’t stop at reasoning. Wild gesticulation, raising his voice, out-talking and silencing his opponent(s) are all part of his hedonistic play. Just as in any other game, victory is the final goal. Predrag doesn’t even consider losing. He’ll always defend his opinions, even when it’s to his own detriment. Giving up would deny the very essence of the game. Stalemates never satisfied anyone.
In his work, passion and play become one. Even if his ideas are seemingly impossible to achieve, he won’t drop them as easily. Possible fiascos won’t keep him down. Some adjustments are only a part of the risk, but his will to create is much larger than this risk.
Just like any other game master, Predrag will use tricks, pranks and gimmicks in order to catch his opponent unprepared. He is the type of person who will take a piece from a museum and then plant it as his work in his solo exhibition. This cost him a lost friendship, but also earned him an award. In another instance, he (without asking or noticing anyone) drilled a hole in a gallery in order to connect the ground floor with the first floor, because that was the most practical solution for his exhibition. Facing this fait accompli, the gallery director couldn’t do anything but let him finish. Her opinion and the whole situation didn’t mean much to Predrag. At the opening, he happily stated: Victory!
Some passions and delights become adoration – an object of glorification – a fetish.
He has a great number of those.
Once, I witnessed Predrag’s celebration of a piece of bacon. This interpretation of perfection; this amount of adoration and love for a piece of meat was something I’d never seen before. In this idealization, bacon became a flying carpet, because its perfect harmony allows it to fly. It’s that perfect. It wasn’t hard to imagine him sitting on that carpet with his legs crossed and a big turban on his head, in the state of nirvana as the forces of cosmos – nature, man and bacon – become One.
Optical show is an interactive light installation that is showcasing an open accidental archive of socks (pantyhose). How is this transparent and almost invisible material so enticing? What makes it so appealing? The archive currently includes over fifty different samples and new additions will be included over time. For this purpose, Predrag created an object/projector in order to see the samples in larger scales. The image that we see is the structure of the materials and ornaments of pantyhose.
He invites his audience to participate in this research. We are free to choose the samples we want to examine more closely. I suspect that there is a little prank hidden in this interaction. The invitation to participate and our compliance will transform us into subjects of a behavioral experiment. Are we going to behave and act according to his predictions? Are we going to handle the samples with passion and pleasure too? What is similar or different between our approaches to these objects?
I am not sure what conclusion Predrag could draw from this experiment, I don’t even care. I will simply use this opportunity to explore some pantyhose-related thoughts that have been bothering me for a long time.
– Vedran Perkov
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Predrag Pavić was born in 1982 in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated (2011) at the Academy of Fine Arts (ALU) in Zagreb. He has exhibited in group and solo shows in Zagreb, Split, Pula, Osijek, Gothenburg, Catania, Sofia, Düsseldorf, Gdansk, and was awarded for his work: Grand Prix at the 10th Triennial of Croatian sculpture, Grand Prix Emanuel Vidović at the 38th Split salon, award for the best graduate of ALU in 2011, Croatian AICA association award at the 12th Sculpture Triennial and the Radoslav Putar Award in 2019. He is a member of the Croatian Freelance Artist Association. He lives and works in Zagreb.
IMPRESSUM:
EXHIBIT CURATOR: Vedran Perkov
NMG CURATORIAL TEAM: Katarina Duplančić, Natasha Kadin, Vedran Perkov
DESIGN: Nikola Križanac
TRANSLATION, SETUP AND DOCUMENTATION: Katarina Duplančić
DONORS: Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media, the City of Split
MAVENA SUPPORTED BY: The National Foundation for Civil Society Development, the Kultura Nova foundation
SPECIAL THANKS: KUM, MKC, PDM
Press:
https://visitsplit.com/hr/5141/izlozba-opticki-sou;
http://pdm.hr/nmgpraktika_predrag-pavic-opticki-sou;
https://www.culturenet.hr/default.aspx?id=104314;
https://dom-mladih.org/nmgpraktika-predrag-pavic-opticki-sou.
