NMG@PRAKTIKA: Alma Štrkljević, Josipa Krolo // Lines – Nudes

EXHIBITION OPENING:
Thursday, 21st February 2019, at 20:00

NMG@PRAKTIKA, Klub KOCKA, Dom mladih Split, Ulica slobode 28
The exhibition is open until February 28th every day from 20 to 22 h

A photograph. A moment in time. A memory. A canvas for an idea. Spontaneity and a plan, experiment and knowledge, play and dedication, elegance and chaos, light and shadow… a stream of consciousness and contrasting associations spill onto the paper while I reminisce about the conversation I had with Josipa and Alma. This text was not as easy to write as I thought it would be. I pondered long and hard a way to start and conceive it. I wondered why is that so. And concluded that, in the background, there is this insecurity how to genuinely depict the strength of the experience and the value of that which impressed me so much listening to them playfully describe the process of how this work came to be. I realized I never did wrong by being honest. I would thus write from the soul, not waiting for inspiration to come. That is how these opening lines you are currently reading came about. In its core, art is simple. Just like the title of the work shown in this exhibition. The spark is either present or not in the eye of the observer. Both of mine sparkled while I listened to them finish each other’s sentences, talking to me about the process of creating photographs with which they are debuting in Split. The girls say they do not like long, pretentious, hermetic exhibition texts. We agreed on that. I don’t either, that is why I am writing this with a dose of intimacy and sensibility. Well right, maybe the text will end up a bit longer than expected, but I will try to sum up what this is all about, and leave the experience itself to you, the observers. The idea for the series of nudes in the media of digital photography summed in the title Line-nude, came about from an exam idea Alma had in college. Considering they were close friends who worked together in the past, she asked Josipa to pose for her and proposed that she, besides being a model, participated in the creation in the way that she draws on her own body, since Josipa paints as well. The intention was that she used this method to draw a shape, and neutralize the body. Finding inspiration in a number of artists, for example in art photography of Edward Weston, in the “Dance Curves: On the Dances of Palucca” by Wassily Kandinsky, in the color schemes of the Bauhaus and similar, the authors toyed with shapes, the relationship between light and dark, contrasts, volume, shape, geometry, etc. The body became the canvas and the lens a paintbrush. What they wanted to express was the line that changes shapes as the body moves. That is the reason why the nudes are decapitated, to rid the body of semantic biological meaning and turn it into sculpture, while the black background emphasized the sharpness of the edge and the clarity of line. As the authors put it: By testing the possibilities of the body poses, we capture its sculpturality, and its form is additionally explained to the observer by brush strokes.
The mutual trust and eclecticism have resulted in an intimate performance by the two artists which became the platform to build on and continue working together. These photographs are the current result which they created by enjoying the process of working together without limitations. Only one spark, the goal is met. But, they have just started their journey together. The options to explore are barely just opened. As Alma puts it: “The entire life is an exploration, I’m not afraid I have to reach a conclusion.”

CURATOR:
Ivana Vukušić

NMG PROGRAMME CURATORS:
Ivana Vukušić, Natasha Kadin, Tina Vukasović Đaković

DESIGN:
Nikola Križanac

EXHIBITION LAYOUT AND DOCUMENTATION:
Tihana Mandušić

DONORS:
Ministarstvo kulture RH, Grad Split, Splitsko-dalmatinska županija

MAVENA SUPPORTED BY:
Nacionalna zaklada za razvoj civilnog društva, Zaklada Kultura nova

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
KUM, PDM, HULU, MKC

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