VITAR DRINKOVIĆ’S EXHIBITION IS OPEN!

On Friday, June 3, 2024, we opened Vitro Drinković’s exhibition “Retroevolution of self-perception”.

The exhibition is open until May 12, 2024.

Working hours: MON-FRI 09:00-19:00 // SAT 11:00-17:00 // SUN closed.

With innovative, interactive objects, whether in physical or virtual form, Vitar Drinković offers new solutions for getting to know man and his environment. The selection of works covers a consistent multi-thematic period from 2012 to 2023 and offers a chronology of the development of Drinković’s new media practice.

By breaking down the complexity of various social constructs, syndromes, and processes into simple forms, Drinković presents them from a different perspective, often through self-perception. By turning the “lens” towards himself, Drinković twists the concepts of productivity and efficiency, work and rest, restlessness and burnout, the impossibility of honest communication, capitalism, and balancing a healthy life with constant creativity in such a way that they become truly worrying – sometimes seemingly ridiculous – with to raise their awareness. Retro-evolutionary, he turns to simpler forms of self-understanding and self-perception through an evolutionary prism – it breaks down social constructs and feelings into basics and arranges them into new, material structures. The selection of works presented in the exhibition “Retroevolution of self-perception” is entirely the artist’s, without the intervention of the curator, and we can consider it another of Drinković’s ways of creating a new platform for communication.

Through interactive installations and sculptures, as well as animations and XR works, the artist’s fascination with the themes of social pressure for constant productivity and efficiency is presented (Sunbed, 2023; Push-up alarm, 2023; Efficiency timer, 2023; Work while sleeping, 2023) which it also leads to the burnout syndrome (Unrest, 2021) and the continuous and tireless creation of a methodology that will bring awareness, organize and materialize this seemingly abstract and, according to social norms, insufficient productivity (Life game, 2012; EAMM, 2013). By placing a circle of spoons above the cast of a bull’s head, almost like a halo, the artist deglorifies consumerism with the installation Digestive system (2015) – the cast of a bull surrounded by the shine of metal spoons represents the sacrifice of strength and life for a system that is always hungry.

An apparent, but great, struggle with social pressures is also a struggle with oneself – the interactive sculpture State of Survival (2017) problematizes man’s self-destructive side. The influence that the environment has on man, but also how much he influences himself, is a topic that Drinković approaches from several other perspectives (Conductivity of perception, 2017; Selfie hug, 2015-2017) – circumstances and thoughts to an extremely large extent they affect body chemistry, processes and perception of reality. In the form of XR The Family Hoe (2023) – an homage to his father, the sculptor Slavomir Drinković – Drinković wants to tell us that physical work, although tiring, can be mentally liberating, which is then, finally, connected to rest. Another homage, this time to childhood, but also a cry for the ultimate rest, was made with a model of a spaceship named JL 44 (2011) after the registration mark of the family ship to which memories of peace bind him.

The interactive video game Vacation (2022) is set in a 3D model of Zagreb’s Central Station, created by the process of photogrammetry. The atmosphere created by Drinković is calm and relaxing, but with a constant feeling of discomfort, restlessness, uncertainty and doom. Uncertainty, which is also a frequent participant in the artist’s work, is emphasized in XR Protocol (2023).

The installation Accept Cancel (2013) deals with the problems of the ubiquitous world of the Internet and the saturation of clicking with the mouse on the icons for “accept” or “cancel”, and then the way of life itself, where we constantly “accept” and “cancel” lifestyles, images, things… Drinković offers us a cure for this almost disease – a device for practicing acceptance and letting go in general. Emoticoin (2022) examines the role of emotions on the decisions of investors in stocks and cryptocurrencies – the artist creates his own currency, the value of which falls, and it is sold if the camera captures negative emotions among visitors, and positive emotions encourage price growth and purchases.

In busy everyday life, honest communication is often missing. With the interactive installation Heart Tube (2019), the intricacies of today’s various forms of communication are reduced to the most sincere and non-verbal – the heartbeat – while Communication Sculpture 4 (2015) reduces communication to uncorrupted tactility. With the interactive installation Focus (2013), he explores the topic of self-criticism and social pressure related to the physical appearance and status of an individual – the illustration of the problem is clear by using a device that changes the perspective. Finally, Drinković draws our attention to communication with a single plant (through technology) and points to the need for a world that is less anthropocentric (Plant Blindness, 2018).

Marina Šafarić

Vitar Drinković was born in Zagreb in 1983 and lives and works in Zagreb. He began his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he graduated in sculpture in 2008. During his studies, in 2006, he spent one semester at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in the USA. In 2014, he completed his graduate studies in animation and new media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, as part of which he participated in a student exchange at London Metropolitan University in England.

Among the thirty-two solo exhibitions so far, the ones in Porte 10 (Rouen, France), Art Gallery (Split), Gallery 90 60 90 (Zagreb), and at the Central Station and front of the Art Pavilion in Zagreb stand out.

He exhibited at almost eighty group exhibitions in Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Austria, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and France.

He created eight sculptures in public space and participated in fourteen art workshops.

He is the winner of several awards, recognitions, and scholarships, and in 2021 he was a finalist for the Radoslav Putar Award.

He works at the intersection of technology, science, and art through the creation of interactive devices, inventions, and installations that often serve as mediators in communication between people. He intends to investigate and create a new context, “conditions”, for a different sensory and thought cognition of everyday life.