Dajana Durić: Residence of the Void

10 February 2017 > 03 March 2017 Kindly invited to the opening of the exhibition " Residence of The Void" by Dajana Durić, on Friday, 10th February, at 8 pm, at the Alkatraz Gallery. The guided tour of the exhibition will be held on Friday, 3rd March at 6pm (in Croatian). Opening hours of the gallery on that day: 11 am - 3pm & 4 - 8pm.

Dajana Durić is an artist yet unbeknownst to the Slovenian audience. However, since her artistic language is original and perfected she will certainly attract the public with her exhibition in the Alkatraz Gallery. She does not conceal her interests under the veil of poetics; she prefers to articulate them clearly: she likes to arrange spaces that allow the presentation of situations representing transience of human moods and the multi-layeredness of memories. The spaces that she constructs are distinguished not only by their visual sensibility, but also by the strong presence of scent, sound and sensation, which contribute to a more active perception of the exhibition. Dajana Durić perceives art as wholesome experience that makes possible not only an aesthetic experience, but also an exploration of one’s own self.  The author likes to move the boundaries of perception of what we usually comprehend as the art field. In one of her former projects she evolves from the medium of a painting which turns into outset for a psychological investigation of an individual’s sensibility and the question how it influences the understanding of reality.

The author likes to place her artworks in diverse locations.  She has explored locations like the forest, while on the other hand she has, in a gallery environment, created her own woods, concurrently representing a unique diary of authentic intimate experiences, turned into images made of textile images, resembling a fantasy forest.  The Micro-organic Woods project is, according to the author her most significant artwork until now. It was conceived as an attempt to preserve the memory of her father who had passed away in this period. The textile trees are white and are located in an equally white gallery space. The artist will choose a similar colour composition symbolising briefness and contemplation for the installation in the Alkatraz Gallery.

It is interesting to observe how her artistic message is not shaped only by the imagination and an original multi-layered creativity, but also diligent work, always the result of the long process of the birth of an art piece. Her exhibitions require several months or even years of creation; the Residence of the Void project took a year to complete, Micro-organic Woods even two – tenacious work thus represents an important component of her artistic language.

The site-specific installation, exhibited in our gallery, will be composed of 72 canvases in the dimension of 60x60 cm, onto which a collage made from tea bags will be attached, and which, during the exhibition, scatter on the floor, thus changing the arrangement of the installation in the gallery. Wandering about the gallery among the teas there will be visitors, and the path to their sensations will be made easier by the tea scent. The project represents transience, imperfection and oblivion and is closely related to oriental perception of beauty. The concept of the work originates in the Japanese aesthetics and philosophy of Wabi-Sabi. The beginnings of its practice stem from the Tea Masters (tea rooms). Wabi-Sabi is unveiled through harmony, simplicity and modesty that could be related to the notion of less is more. "What you see is what you see," are the words of Frank Stella on the essence of Minimalism. In the sixties and the seventies of the past century Minimalism prevailed more in sculpture than in painting, however, Clement Greenberg, in his catalogue essay Recentness of Sculpture (1967) falsely determines Minimalism as a novelty of no lasting effect that has more to do with interior design than with art. The work of Dajana Durić will – in a similar manner – puzzle the viewers, as the aesthetics of Wabi-Sabi is based on a void, however, not a literally one, but an immensely more complex one. The task of the viewers is to fill the space with a vision that further upgrades their aesthetic feelings. The artist implements such concept in a space that is able – in line with this concept – to accept the aesthetically-contemplative function or is capable of mutual co-operation with the human mind. The changeable aesthetic experience of the space, the positioning encourages the viewer into an introspective facing with a synesthetic and perceptive situation that may provoke various associations, feelings, or can even evoke memories. The principal element and constituent part of the artwork is the tea, of which symbolism spans a long way into a distant past.  In the everyday banality of the notion of the tea, which has nevertheless influenced Taoist thought and can be perceived as a symbol of spiritual cleansing, the artist is searching for a deeper meaning. Like the above mentioned duty of the viewer, the viewer is obliged to accompany the artist in this quest.

Ana Grobler & Sebastian Krawczyk

Dajana Durić (1986, Rijeka, Croatia) completed her undergraduate study of Art Education at the Academy of Applied Arts, University of Rijeka and integrated undergraduate and postgraduate university study at the Faculty of Painting (specialization in experimental textile) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she received her MA with Rector’s Honours. She is engaged in the media of installation and textile. Her works are often of interactive and participatory character, sometimes involving different senses (touch, smell and sound) by which she endeavours to provoke different emotional states and evoke individual remembrances. Since the year 2015, she has worked as assistant at the University of Rijeka, at the Academy of Applied Arts, at the  Department for Drawing.