Lauba proudly presents the exhibition of the graphic map “Factory Mornings” by Milan Trenc. The opening will take place on 15.12. at 8 pm and the prescribed epidemiological measures will be followed.
Through the “Factory Mornings” map, Trenc tries to explore the interrelationship between two simultaneously acclaimed and contested styles of the past century, pop art and social realism. Using style as an excuse for further research, this series of works departs from the usual technology of Trenc’s creation, video, film and digital printing because it explores the technique of screen printing using scenes from the comics “Maljčiki” (Studentski list, 1981) inspired by the Belgrade band Idoli.

In terms of content, the presented ideas mythologize the social-realist everyday life as the official myth of the “class-empowered” proletariat through the prism of the consumerist paradigm of the capitalist ethos, creating a conglomeration of ideological absurdities that put the viewer in a position of confused read them again in this analysis as elements of manipulation that are present in both genres, and more broadly in the context of agreed stylistic features.

The high aestheticization of Trenc’s works, which is consistent throughout all phases of his extremely diverse and rich opus, is evident in this universe and with its color and line strength gives the works a lasting aesthetic quality that surpasses the ephemeral kozerstvo of the project itself.

Milan Trenc (1962) is engaged in animation, comics, illustration, film and television directing, and writing screenplays and books. He graduated in film directing at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in the class of prof. Kreše Golika. In the early eighties, in addition to studying directing, he began publishing comics in Polet and Studentski list. From 1985 until his death, he was the main illustrator of Start magazine. From 1991 to 2004 he was in New York where he published comics in Heavy Metal Magazine, and his illustrations appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Fortune Magazine, Washington Post, Business Week and others. major American newspapers. For his illustrations in The New York Times he won awards from Print magazine (1993) and the Society of Publication Designers (2003). In 1993, he wrote and illustrated the children’s book The Night at the Museum, based on a Hollywood film produced by 20th Century Fox (2006). He has participated in group exhibitions at the Georges Pompidou Center, Paris, Art in General, New York and the Sherry Frumkin Gallery, Los Angeles. He has had a number of solo exhibitions, Klovićevi Dvori Gallery (2007), Nova Gallery (2008), MUO (2017) Forum Gallery (2019). He is a full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

The graphic map Factory Mornings of Milan Trenc was published by the National and University Library in Zagreb with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia within the Year of Reading program and with the support of the Adris Foundation. The editor of the publication is Charlotte Marie Frank, senior curator at the Graphic Collection of the National and University Library in Zagreb.