In the dimmed light of the gallery space, six black books are displayed on six white pedestals. Each is lit by a small black lamp hanging from the ceiling. The ambience is reminiscent of a stylized idea of some ancient library. As the gallery entrance is preceded by a passage through a hallway dominated by a black wall inscribed with almost calligraphic handwritten sentences in chalk, it leads the visitor to presume that this preview will in some way develop further in the displayed books. All the more so because the subject matter of the white sentences is of a general, almost universal nature and gives a metaphysical turn to fundamental concepts: something and nothing. In the center of the black wall, between white lines of philosophical discussion displayed  by the author like a manifesto, there’s a screen on which a single word is repeated, like a mantra, in unmistakable white letters on a black background: Now. The rhythm of the flashing is regular and quite fast, the looping sequences one second each. For one fourth of a second the word appears, and for the remaining three fourths there’s just a black screen, which is a way of translating the theme of something and nothing into the dimension of time. One could say: three to one for nothing. Such treatment of transience is at once a caricatured emphasis of the fact of the present moment which we happen to be flitting through, the moment is broken down into elements, and we wonder if we are moving at all or do we remain stuck in this forever “now” in which we cannot even notice its elements in which it is gone. That means that even this “something” consists of three nothings and one something. By a humorous translation of the binary code into an abstraction of the phenomenon of time, as discovered by Zeno using the arrow example, which is in fact static at each point in time, but in the end appears to move or fly, the author illustrates the possibility of using this code or deciphering it with the help of the aforementioned, similarly elusive phenomenon of existence. But existence here is merely in the form of concept, or its translation, owing to the undeniable fact that nothing doesn’t really exist. Because the word nothing, when written down – becomes something.

When elementary concepts of yes or no, is or isn’t, are initially announced, it is established that everything, fundamentally, is, because at this level of discussion to question negation means to affirm it. This treatment continues in the exhibited books. They, however, contain no more text, and if we open any one of them at any page, we find abstract lines and white surfaces. But the notice on the pedestal invites leafing through the book as you would through a flipbook, thereby creating an illusion of moving images similar to a cartoon. Following the instructions, we take the book and let the pages glide through our fingers, and the abstract forms appear, take shape, and disappear. The pages gradually fill up or become empty, each of the six books representing one of six different principles, structured graphically or geometrically, with  a final idea formed only by leafing through them. This brings us to wonder what we consider full, and what empty. In painting terms white would be the sum of all colors, and black the absence of color. But then, in an experiential way, white is the beginning, i.e. absence of content, and black is the ending because it is only attainable by painting over the white. Of course, we are talking about paper, not the universe. Leafing through creates change, a gradual transition, but when we stop, we recognize the traces of marker in the black surface – all the blacks were made by hand. It appears, after all, that black is full and white is empty. This information, however, doesn’t mean much to us, despite the precise form of these images, the gradualness, or the principle of change or variation expressed in drawing, in all of which we can perhaps glimpse or associate in our mind’s eye the ambient context more than a recognizable shape, but the fundamental question of yes or no, something or nothing, remains unanswered.

Preoccupation with the changing of shapes is momentary – what remains are black books filled with black-and-white content, displayed on white pedestals. If we look at the visual component,  given its art gallery setting, we could say it is reduced to non-divisible elements while maintaining visual content – black and white surfaces, or more precisely black interference in the original whites. Colors are eliminated and so is the recognizability of shapes, and even the defined structures are void of any possibility of communicating with the content on any basis. Only one subject remains: the relationship between presence and absence, something and nothing.

If we take the book as a fact with its usual connotations, on a conceptual level a parallel comparison can be made with the exhibits: as in a standard book, there is black on white, and as we move through it, some kind of development happens – the fabric of text in some way establishes the line of narrative. These books also have to be leafed through in order to get an image, one page is not enough, pages are in relation to one another, scenes slowly but steadily change, develop, appear or disappear. The presence of something is here but is expressed by the absence of any concrete attribute of this presence.

But then we cannot say it has no content when it is, throughout the exhibition, clearly announced by manifesto-sentences at the entrance, and consistently actualized through the presentation and role of individual pieces or even at the level of the stages of constructing these pieces.

This content was symbolically announced in the title: “Balloon with hole.” Formally speaking, a balloon is a balloon even before it is filled with air or any other gas. It will remain so even after being emptied, but its main purpose is to be filled, and that’s what makes it a balloon in our minds. When we say “deflated balloon,” we refer to some kind of post-festum state which, granted, inevitably ensues, but not until its purpose is realized. A balloon with a hole precludes realization – it didn’t and it couldn’t happen.

And so this “now” has passed in a blink of an eye, a new one has arrived and again passed. When is it actually here? When has it materialized?

The books’ content is fluid in a similar way, and by leafing through we get information about its existence, but this information is limited only to what is imparted by the act of leafing through, which leads us to repeat the original question: something or nothing? Or further: when?, how?, what exactly? And the answer is: This precisely, by handling this, these nonexistent attributes, emphasizing the impossibility of determination.

A balloon with a hole is and isn’t a balloon. It now both is and isn’t. And nothing is something because nothing can only be expressed with something.

The author’s probing of the difference between the conceptual and the actual through various manifestations of the problem is not evaluated by the same criteria used to gauge the soundness of proposed answers to this abstract question (or the absence of such answers), but instead by evaluating the discovery of ways to demonstrate or materialize it, which in turn open a space of representation and determination of the dis/appearance of this absurd theme.

Right at the entrance to the gallery space, almost like a preface, we are greeted by a print titled „Star Sky“. The universe is, of course, in negative: scattered or only slightly grouped white dots on a black background. Thin white horizontal lines sketched over the dots represent the foreground space—the screen that stands between us and the universe. Furthermore, within the indicated cinemascope screen is a white rectangle in which we recognize a door. We observe the universe, therefore, through a specific lens, which is to say, through the artist’s translation. However, since the content within the sketched frame is the same as that outside of it, the frame is empty; there is effectively no intervention. Except for the fact that its presence is announced by those white lines, meaning that the frame itself is the subject—a kind of portal set in absolute space. The lines represent the edges, and the door suggests the possibility of passing into the realm of what is figuratively called “the other side of the universe.” But while such a portal opens insight into countless imaginary worlds, the other works in the exhibition—which we encounter upon passing through it—deal precisely with the portal itself, translating these boundaries into the edges of the exhibition format. And while in the free graphic interpretation of the universe, these edges (like the introductory portrait) are located within the image itself—that is, its exhibition format—the other works either do not respect the format, or the frame does not respect their intention.

The latter is expressed, for instance, in a video diptych where the exhibition format—in this case, a video displayed on a plasma screen—takes on the role of defining the space of content, specifically the space of the artist’s play with a pink ball. Although she is outdoors, in a green meadow or amidst a field of yellow flowers, the ball she throws does not follow a natural trajectory. In one instance, it bounces off the upper edge of the plasma screen; in another, it bounces frontally off the screen from the “inner” side and returns to the artist. The space of her content is determined by the arbitrariness of the exhibition format; the ball bounces off edges invisible to her, making her freedom merely an illusion. While Ana, as a character in the video unaware of the framed nature of her space, repeats the action in a loop, Ana as the author of the works Cutting and Cutting II transcends this. She steps out of the frame of her role, moves a step back, and observes the activity trapped within the screen’s frame from a wider concentric circle. If we understand the screens as paintings—appearing as windows into a seemingly infinite space of a flowered meadow, thus replicating the door to the imaginary part of the universe—we see how the realization of that imagination is limited by the medial mediator.

A similar case occurs with the large projection across the entire wall at the far end of the hall. Again, a ball is involved, this time colorful like a globe, but within the projection surface, there is another frame within which the content unfolds. The ball is thrown from the left side of the frame and bounces off its right side, then hops along the bottom part and disappears in the direction from which it was thrown, meaning the left side of the projection is “open.” This reintroduces edges into the story, but this time it is not the projection surface that determines the content’s space—the ball does not bounce off a wall positioned perpendicularly to the projection wall, but off a frame within the projection. It could be said that the exhibition format, through a seemingly simple technological trick, again calls the shots; even the globe plays by its medial rules.

Sometimes, however, content triumphs. In the work Triangle, a video shows a triangular black scarf, pointed downwards, fluttering in the wind. The scarf is larger than the screen, so its projection is cut off by the bottom edge. A material piece of fabric is then attached to that edge, extending beyond the exhibition format and completing the scarf—the content.

The installation Other Reality behaves in a similar way. It consists of two gallery pedestals which, through the artist’s intervention, have been declared sculptures. There is no expected content on the pedestals; instead, a paper mantle descends along one side of each, taped to the top surface and partially continuing onto the floor. The paper mantle assumes the role of the exhibit since its beginning is at the very spot where the pedestal’s function is meant to be realized. With its slightly oval shape, it softens one side of the pedestal, lending it a new form, and continues softly across the floor. At the point of connection, the white and black mantles transition into a print of the floor motif, attempting mimicry. Regardless of this attempt, the edges of the exhibition format have been crossed; content has once again spilled out into the space.

The installation A Place That Does Not Exist consists of several photographs mounted on aluminum plates of various sizes, curved into the form of an unfinished cone, somewhat reminiscent of street advertising pillars. The plates are self-standing, and the photographs show the artist standing with her arms outstretched in urban settings. The scene, however, is distorted, like a circus mirror that widens the reflection. It appears that the aluminum plate was curved after the photograph was mounted, causing the content to expand. This is particularly evident in the artist’s arms, which are stretched across the entire photograph. This is, of course, a simulation—one that is now achieved equally by the content and the exhibition format.

Torn Time (inkjet on paper, 100 x 100 cm) can be declared a collage because it consists of several layers of printed photographs depicting a light blue sky with sparse whitish clouds. In the “top” photograph, the middle part has been irregularly torn away by hand, revealing the one beneath it—very similar, with only a slightly different cloud configuration—which also has its middle part torn away, opening a view to the bottom-most layer of the celestial vault. One might say there is no questioning of the exhibition format here; it does not set boundaries off which content bounces or manages to cross. The collage is classically framed and properly placed within a white passe-partout. However, an unexpected development occurs within. The photograph of the sky is likely “unclear” as to why its middle part was torn away, just as the middle layer is. By leaving the edges of the torn parts visible, the layers are emphasized. Since the motif is one we might interpret as unchanging or eternal, the answer to the question of what lies behind this time is figuratively solved by the treatment. Just as behind the drawn door to another part of the universe lies that same universe, behind torn time lies that same time—or rather, its new/old concentric circles or spirals.

The work Bite Size also deals with the frame. The communication between content and exhibition format is resolved here by extending photographed elements into a material staging. Two photographs show the remains of walls from demolished houses. In the first, a section of wall covered in white tiles takes center stage; in the second, it is a window whose frame rises slightly above the upper edge of the wall, having miraculously remained intact after the demolition. Framed identically, the tiles and the window become screens—frames within the photograph. In the first, we associate a possible projection surface; in the second, instead of a projection, a framed view into the space behind the window is provided. Just as in the cases of Universe and Torn Time, the scene behind does not differ significantly from the one in front; everything is demolished both here and there.

Due to the perspective and color palette, we declare the photographs a diptych, especially since they clearly depict walls of the same house. This is reinforced, almost at the level of evidence, by the bricks and tiles from the photographs installed in the space. Above the top edge of the wall, there is nothing; it appears as if it were cleanly cut off. The identical framing of the two scenes suggests that, through the manifestation of some higher power, the entire house was cut off in one stroke—or rather, bitten off, as specified by the title. The size of that bite is certainly frightening, just as the others are, each in its own way. The artist presents its edges, just as she portrays—in other cases involving space, time, and media—the edges that frame it.

© Boris Greiner / Conquered Territories, Petikat

The Imagery of Words

[Excerpt from the text for the catalog East of Eden]

The use of language, or rather the painting of words and letters, is characteristic of ANA PETROVIĆ’s paintings/practice, serving a completely different role than in the painting of Zlatko Kozina. Pay to Touch This Painting is a series of works created in 2015, representing a continuation of a 2010 series. It speaks to a very prominent habit among the Osijek artists represented in the exhibition: the temporalization of their themes, i.e., engaging with a specific concept over a longer period in a non-linear sequence. Whether painted in acrylic from a frontal or a side-angled perspective, these paintings—much like those whose surfaces and letterforms are made of unconventional materials such as metal particles or decorative glitter on canvas—reveal words like “Broken” or “Shattered” (both from 2017). These paintings are characterized by a certain regular distortion, compression, or stretching of letters/words vertically and/or horizontally, giving an impression of tightness or the flexible width of the painted format. The words in these paintings exist in a state similar to the anamorphic skull in Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533), a painting full of hidden messages, mysterious encryptions, and dangerous meanings—a story of power and schism told through banal motifs.

Words like “pure” or “pay” are simply Ana Petrović’s alternative—textual—way of staging something seemingly banal. However, in the sentences she inscribes on the glass facades of art institutions (the gallery in Osijek, the college in Ulm, or a building in Timișoara) calling for “breaking,” the message transitions into a purely visualized, even meticulously designed message that is far too aestheticized to be truly politically “engaged” or to imply actual destructive action. With these works, Petrović realizes the presentational form of the painting as an intervention in space, or the form of an ambient painting, as seen when multi-colored adhesive tapes (cellotape, electrical tape, masking tape) were collaged onto the gallery entrance floor for the exhibition Naježiti (the work Non-Red Carpet, 2015). This speaks to Ana Petrović’s tendency to extend her pictorial-textual expressions into adaptable in situ/site-specific formats. Meanwhile, the content/meanings of some of the imperative inscriptions appeal more to an awareness of the limits of action/situation than they agitate for actual interventions in the social corpus of art—namely, rebelling against the distribution of power within the institutional structure of art, against the division between the favored and the systematically neglected in a hierarchy of values determined by capital, market pricing methods, distribution networks, and the like.

“Ana Petrović’s staged statements lead us to a type of painting where the idea is and remains both the starting and the final point,” Igor Loinjak observed regarding the series Pay to Touch This Painting. In agreement with this, it should be added that this conceptualized painting equally touches upon Pop Art aesthetics in a way described by Ian Burn in 1972. He stated that had Joseph Kosuth’s paintings from the series Art as Idea as Idea been made a few years earlier, they would have been declared Pop Art objects, but by being exhibited in 1967, they became paradigmatic cases of the “strict form of conceptual art.” [1]

In the clear conceptual foundation of Ana Petrović’s painting, such linear-historical—stylistic—conditions of art are inscribed and recognized, but no less significant is the artist’s desire to step beyond them. Between the variable dimensions of the works and the imperative statements/instructions for aggressive action, or big words in “cramped,” “too small” formats of stretched canvas, there vibrates a often fluorescent-bright Pop-colorism. This, not without reason, is more reminiscent of, for example, Robert Indiana’s Demuth Five in Gold (1963, after R. Demuth’s I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928) or similar “boundary” cases like Ed Ruscha’s word paintings—even his monumental Hollywood inscription (and it so happens that Ruscha himself painted the sentence Pay Nothing Until April in 2003, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 in.)—than Kosuth’s black panels with graphically designed white script/texts alongside definitions taken from dictionaries, or Lawrence Weiner’s elegant, moderately colored environments with inscriptions on walls. On the other hand, the black-and-white paintings of enlarged “Receipts” supplemented with numbering—”documentary paintings” of various places, years, and shopping contents—inevitably evoke certain conceptual works whose content is reduced to sparse information about materials, formats, and similar concrete technical data of a (non-existent) painting (e.g., Mel Ramsden, 100% Abstract, 1968). However, her paintings here are also mimetic in the style of Pop Art, enlarged like Lichtenstein’s comic book frames. Unlike these non-subjective paintings with popular culture motifs, the sparse content of the Receipts (2012, 2013, 2014) also provides biographical data about the artist. Their starting point is the real world of the artist’s existence, who, in her practice, expertly balances “painting” between “picture” and “image.”

[1] Information taken from Terry Smith, One and Three Ideas, Conceptualism Before, During, and After Conceptual Art, New York, e-flux Journal #29, November 2011.

At first I thought I could simply draw a line under the word medium, bury it like so much critical toxic waste, and walk away from it in a world of lexical freedom. “Medium” seemed too contaminated, too ideologically, too dogmatically, too discursively loaded.

               – Rosalind Krauss: Voyage on the North Sea. Art in the Age of the

Post-Medium Condition [i]

Ways of transcending, interpreting, or transforming the film medium in the artistic practice of Ana Petrović can be subsumed under the term “paracinema,” which is sometimes considered a category of “expanded cinema.” While expanded cinema implies a series of experiments transferring the act of projection from conventional single-screen presentation to multi-screen presentation and performance art, paracinema denotes a set of productions employing procedures of deep analysis of the dispositif to highlight its material, technical or phenomenological components:  projector, film tape, projected light, time.[ii]

For Hollis Frampton, every phenomenon is “paracinematic” if it shares one element with cinema. With that in mind, the challenges of paracinema lie in possibilities of exploring various deviations from the main elements of film. On that note, in contextualizing Slobodan Šijan’s practice revolving “around film,” Dejan Sretenović writes about “deconstructing cinematography down to its constitutive elements, which become independent as autochtonous spheres of film experiment.”[iii] 

“Paracinema identifies an array of phenomena that are considered ‘cinematic,’ but that are not embodied in the materials of film as traditionally defined” – Jonathan Walley points out in “The Material of Film and the Idea of Cinema.”[iv]  Walley recognizes a link between paracinema and conceptual art, occurring when film is approached as an “idea” and not so much as a technical apparatus – in other words, when it is dematerialized.

Ana Petrović’s works take their place within the frame of reference formed by the work Line Describing a Cone by Anthony McCall, recognized by Walley as one of the key examples of the concepts of paracinema and expanded cinema. Her works take shape as a series of photographs, a photosequence, or an artist-book in the form of flipbook (daumenkino). They are understood as spaces in which to explore the boundaries of media. Also, Ana Petrović’s video Non Visual Film brings forms of media research to their final consequences in terms of both substance and reception, given that this film is watched with the eyes closed, i.e. experienced by not seeing. The rhythmicality of light and sound, an experiment on the verge of abstraction, follows in the footsteps of historical avant-garde experiments, like the film Arnulf Rainer by Peter Kubelka.

Ana Petrović approaches her works as forms of media research manifesting in various media and formats. They reflect a predominant interest in projection as a space of perception and an instrument for producing optical sensations. In devising specific viewing conditions and contraptions, Ana Petrović shifts the attention towards the observer as the key element in the process of artistic reception, by exploring the elasticity of individual perception and creating sensations.

Branko Franceschi writes that the works of Ana Petrović “denote a multimedia process and contraption generating the magic of perception of projected movement as a trail of light. Despite the obvious fascination with film and the element of persistence of vision, which is the basis of perceiving moving images, the visual exploration of Ana Petrović also addresses optical and gestalt art, engaging our ability to use abstract templates to develop narratives, maybe even clear mental images.”[v]

In the series of photographs Untitled, which is structured like a photo sequence, the author records an image of a ray of light coming out of the projector. The photograph is at once a minimalist gesture and an expression of interest in projection as a means of film reproduction. On a similar note, LIFRAM Daumenkino (cinema for the thumb) is an artist book in which the author articulates her interest in the prehistory of moving pictures, and her “paper cinema” was inspired by none other than the “technology” of the first moving pictures.[vi]

Through such experimental works, the artist enters spaces of media thinking and media representation, i.e. remediation, representing one medium through another, demonstrating different cinematic experiments, affirming an almost marginal artistic field, highlighting its experimental potential. In a certain way, she establishes a continuity of interests, connecting past and future. Removed from the normative technology of film production and reproduction, these works use various experimental approaches, by means of “viewing contraptions,” via photographic and video media, in order to refer to the language and magic of film.

[i] Rosalind Krauss: A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the

Post-Medium Condition. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

[ii] Adeena Mey: Suvremena umjetnost i parafilm, in: Misliti film (exhibition catalog), ed. B. Benčić; Cinemaniac 2013, Pula Film Festival; MMC Luka, Pula, 2013.

[iii] Dejan Sretenović : Kino-svet Slobodana Šijana, in: Oko filma (exhibition catalog), Salon Muzeja Savremene Umetnosti, Beograd, 2009.

[iv] Jonathan Walley: The Material of Film and the Idea of Cinema: Contrasting Practices in Sixties and Seventies Avant-Garde Film, in: October, No. 103,  2003.

[v] Branko Franceschi: LIFRAM Ane Petrović u galeriji AŽ;

http://ana-petrovic.blogspot.hr/p/new-media-is-here-to-bestow-us-image.html

[vi] Branka Benčić: Paper Movies (exhibition catalog), Cinemaniac 2014, Pula Film Festival; MMC Luka, Pula, 2014.

Every now and then, an exhibition takes place whose potential motivates the art critic to reevaluate the hierarchy he uses to organize information on current phenomena in the field of his own work and expertise. As much as critics normally try to value art solely on the basis of its quality, it’s a fact of life that weariness and habits born of years of practice, or mere conformity based on results of so-called past work, gradually narrow down the focus of attention and activity to what we call a specific area of professional interest: one’s own generation, the local scene, personal preferences or, even more pragmatically, galleries nearby, in the city center.

As marginal as this lapidary list of reasons may seem from a value perspective, they are often decisive in whether one attends a particular exhibition or not. A systemic analysis of current fine arts presentation in the media would soon confirm the accuracy of these claims, revealing the generally difficult circumstances of introducing new artists and new art to a programmatically well-established and structured scene such as the one in Zagreb. Gallery AŽ, located in Ateliers Žitnjak on the outskirts of Zagreb’s eponymous industrial zone, is an exhibition space operating on the premise of systematically overcoming these practical obstacles, thanks to its manager Kata Mijatović who understands the importance of providing support to those artistic practices considered relevant. Such exhibition spaces have been a known global phenomenon since the 1960s. Professional realization of programs is made possible by the founders’ enthusiasm and, despite the proverbial semi-improvized conditions, they supplement their cultural and social function with informal gatherings of artists and professionals who use this opportunity to socialize, get up to date, and unwind.

In an exhibition titled “Lifram,” Gallery AŽ presents Ana Petrović – a young and relatively unknown artist from Osijek who has already affirmed herself on the local scene as a constructive driving force. At Osijek’s Academy of Arts where she currently works as an assistant, Ana Petrović completed her degree in multimedia in 2011. And not long after, she is introduced in Zagreb with an unusually mature, complex and well thought-out exhibition. The critic is quick to notice the author’s awareness of the need to gradually guide the visitor on a tactile and visual level towards a deeper experience and understanding of her multimedia exploration and elaboration of mechanisms of perceiving moving images. The artist quickly shifts this premise towards a more engaging and personal exploration of our cognitive capacity to generate mental images from reduced visual and auditory stimuli, based on the content stored therein by tradition, experience and education. Lifram is a compound of the words “light” and “frame,” coined by the author herself, judging by the accompanying introduction by Luka Kuveždić. It signifies the multimedia procedure and apparatus generating the magic of perception of projected movement as a trail of light. Although fascination with film is apparent, as is the phenomenon of persistence of vision as a basis for the perception of moving images, Ana Petrović’s visual exploration ultimately references optical and gestalt art, in other words, our ability to develop narratives, perhaps even clear mental images, based on abstract templates. Time, focus and a relaxed state are required to experience the exhibits, facilitating the emergence of inherently personal and hidden mental images on our inner projection screen.

The first exhibited piece, tautologically titled Lifram Daumenkino, includes three books placed on separate pedestals. Quick thumbing though creates a continued stroboscopic effect of a white geometric shape moving on a black surface. This well-known animation effect, which predated various technologies of moving images, introduces visitors to a repertoire of abstract visual matrices in which the artist will build complex installations to follow. Next, the series of photographs Lifram consists of snapshots, made from the sides of a movie theatre, of beams of light transferring the projection to a screen, thus creating in space, and in the ensuing photographs, abstract stripes of differing tone intensity. It is worth noting that these beams were captured during the projection of cult director Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon – the only film in which scenes were filmed in candlelight, with no additional lighting. The exhibit Lifram Prosthesis (Proteza Lifram) is the first contraption at the exhibition to generate moving images. Conceived as a pair of glasses with MP3-powered video monitors in place of lenses, it projects complementary abstract animations for each eye. The end result is an amalgamated image created through the capacity and habit of our sensory apparatus to form a picture by merging information imparted by the left and right eye. Within the same section, a contraption called a Light Boom Box is installed, a device reminiscent of kinetoscopes and kinetographs, devices used in late 19^th century, before the invention of the movie projector, to commercially exhibit moving images by viewing them through a specially designed peephole. This piece introduces the element of sound through bursting noises accompanying slower or faster changes or pulsations of light seen by the visitor through a peephole separating projections to left and right. Variations of these two abstract elements suffice to set in motion an associative sequence in our mind, along with visual memories ranging from sparklers and fireworks to explosions and war.

An installation titled Non Visual Film, although displayed second to last, was chronologically the first experiment undertaken by Ana Petrović in her study of the interaction of light and sound in generating mental images. Accompanied by sound emitted from headphones, the projection is observed on a computer screen with eyes firmly shut, which can be understood as another homage to Kubrick and his last film Eyes Wide Shut. The sequence of geometric shapes appearing on the screen, accompanied by ambient sound from headphones, generates amorphous shadows behind closed lids, creating in the observer’s mind a clear narrative of moving through an urban space. This procedure achieves its most elaborate incarnation in the final installation generically titled Lifram, recreating the experience of watching a film projection in a theatre. At the entrance, visitors are given a pair of frosted-glass eyeglasses used to transform abstract elements projected on a screen into diffuse moving blotches. Augmented by sounds echoing through the exhibition space, visitors develop strings of associations and mental images. This installation can be understood as a reaction to the current obsession with 3D movies, through which the entertainment industry aims to provide the audience with a richer experience, but in doing so renders them more passive. This contrasts with a reduced projection that our author uses to activate visitors’ mental faculties and encourage the creation of their own images.

At its core, Ana Petrović’s exhibition deals with the complex system of human perception, essential not only to the specifics of artistic creation, but also for the survival of humankind. The perceptual exercises she subjects us to, so to speak, promote the understanding that, alongside the physiological apparatus of light and sound reception, perception ultimately involves a rich vault of mental images, some archetypal and some experientially generated. Culturologically speaking, while providing a recap of the history of moving images and a subtle homage to one of the greatest cineastes of all time, the exhibition also relies on the legacy of optical art and minimalism, and with its assortment of unique contraptions evokes the theoretically remembered, but practically almost forgotten heritage and utopia of the manifestation Nove tendencije (New Tendencies). Spatially small, yet rich in substance and carefully elaborated, this young author’s exhibition in the remote Žitnjak plainly testifies that arbitrary distinctions of center, periphery and margin are now on all levels civilisationally overcome. The exhibition is open until 23 October 2013.

During the mid-1960s, conceptual art started with artworks where wordplay dominated or thought was above aesthetic pleasure. Ana Petrović chose that kind of artistic expression, showing it in her works in the earlier years at the group exhibition “Art Colony Rovinj,” and confirmed it with this solo exhibition. The title of the exhibition itself shows and proves us that; with its beauty of thought, it permeates and competes with the aesthetic beauty of presentation of the same thought. The thought that is the title of the exhibition is the exhibited work at the same time. The thought that can be translated as: From nothing to everything – From everything to nothing, or simpler as: Nothing to all – All to nothing. The same phrase also imposes itself as the often present paradigm: Nothing or all – All or nothing, in the description of the mental state and attitude of certain people.

Actually, we could also put it this way: From eternity to the infinite – From the infinite to eternity, where nothing is as infinite as eternal is equal to everything! That mind game of words in a sentence determines the aesthetic beauty of an artwork, especially when we realize that the artist succeeded to visually present those thoughts and words, to merge everything into one artwork where all the elements together are summed up and merged into one. It’s a difficult task considering that in a complex process the thought is followed by words and words are followed by the thought. A complex process that is incessantly and infinitely going away and coming back in a spiral motion. That kind of constant rummaging of thought into one knot and simultaneous disentanglement from the knot, is converted to communication with the help of words. Primarily communication of us with ourselves; we learned language and adopted ways of thinking in the same way when we were kids, when we would tumble a certain word back and forth until we finally learn it, accept it and understand its meaning. A parallel and simultaneous process of exercising self-consciousness that helps children to discover and learn spoken language and thought skills. 

However, that internal speech, our thoughts, need a link to the outside world, although not explicitly and always through spoken words and sentences. Regardless that the whole work i.e. thought could have been presented as a written and spoken sentence, the artist wanted to transfer the meaning of thoughts with the help of the painting medium. Ana Petrović then turned to the visual presentation of signs and symbols in a contemporary way. A heritage from the New Tendencies period can definitely be recognized, as well as the cultural conventions in understanding the film medium, but the technique used by contemporary computers prevails. Numerous layers of canvases on which the image is projected in the gallery space are a link to the expression of the 60s, while the flow of time is emphasized by the filmic component of video necessary for the sequence of displays that are used to create an image of the word and sentence. The assemblage of combinations of symbols (letters), discontinued by partial or total disappearance, without any particular meaning, is synonymous with the messages we handle daily in the digital world. With that, the artist puts technological characteristics of the electronic video image in the core of the context of her artistic expression.

Ana Petrović filled the Gallery space with projections of videos on canvases that are hanging from the ceiling. She transformed the whole of the interior architecture into a space-time box. She chose light and darkness as basic elements she uses and that can express – everything! The images are built from many symbols of unrelated meanings and they mirror today’s tablet screens and messages created in them. The combination of darkness and light creates a special structure we progressively adjust to.  With that space-time installation, she is offering a complex view of the world and communication. Communication is manifested through double projection that has a source from both opposed sides of the room, each projection has its sentence of opposite meaning. That sentence can be decoded only if the viewer carefully and patiently participates in the whole time frame of the projection. While doing that, he/she has to carefully watch everything from different positions in the space. The projection shows letter by letter that is moving on the screen in the dark.

With the use of letters, the two-dimensional surface of the transparent projection screen is transformed into a playful, multidimensional space with unusual kinetic energy, obtained by a small movement. The movement of light in the dark looks like a ballet dance, slowly, continuously moving in all directions the light is sifting through the layers. Losing strength in remote places where it’s interwoven, it gives place to a stronger light, with the projection of the letters with the opposite sign. Simple forms, with the help of movement and light intensity, are used to create complex forms. The letters rise or disappear, as though they come from somewhere or go away somewhere. They are visible to the viewers only individually and repeated through several layers, each time bigger and less clear, fuscous. There are different degrees of visible and invisible in the Gallery space, depending on where the viewer is positioned. All of the invisible parts of the video projection with the visible assume real shapes in our imagination with the help of memory.  We have to remember what we have seen to connect it into one thought.

The viewers of the exhibition become the participants, pulled into another world, esoteric and secretive, a world outside ordinary life, a world of self-consciousness and thoughts. The Gallery becomes a place where a thought dialogue occurs through the remembrance of past and future time. A dialogue with the present time that becomes the past while at the same time, the future becomes the past, with the parallel exploration of being and consciousness through artistic interpretation. The exhibition includes the viewer in its ludic process where games like hide and seek and rebus prevail: insensible, invisible with visible, initiate the complex processes in our consciousness, it awakens our imagination…Light determines existence but also the disappearance of projected shapes, signs, and symbols that are all actually letters. On the projection screens, the light and darkness make the elementary component of shapes and the gallery space represents the space for thinking about relations between space, time, memory, and identity. The absence of color or the monochromatic component of light is in service of the artist’s reduction of artistic expression. A sophisticated dialogue with visible and invisible, space-time form and memory with a few simple signs. Order and chaos in our time thinking process and consciousness that is constantly exchanged through meaningless layers of complicated and unrelated meaning, actually says that the present is a barely visible moment!

Dario Sošić

Female contribution in Croatian visual arts is a history of an exceptional creative struggle. The history of women’s art education has likewise tended to present them with obstacles, a lack of system, and a worldview that espoused the idea that “art is not for women.”

It was a long road from Mila Wood, the first Croatian sculptress to have her sculptures publicly installed, to Ana Petrović. A far cry from the time when women dressed up as men to attend classes, today we have women whose work is altering the landscape of modern Croatian reality and whose witty commentary helps introduce topics into the public space.

Ana is one of those artists who came to embody Andy Warhol’s adage about “15 minutes of fame” indirectly, with the help of a typical political skirmish for public office, a skirmish by no means extraordinary in a system relying on state institutions. This one has, however, earned its place in Croatian popular culture and Croatian art history by launching into the media orbit a young female artist from Osijek who would have, if not for the usual accoutrements accompanying the tussle for public office, remained for her entire career unknown beyond the narrow circle of her profession. The “emblematic work” Pussy Smoke (the name is a Croatian slang expression for “piece of cake”), albeit older than a decade, exhibits the artist’s space of expression that ranges from abstract depictions of the female body to semantic-linguistic play with titles that carry a strong social commentary on misogyny and also a fresh sense of humor.

Eros, as a plot instigator and generally the most attractive media merchandise, and its counterpart death, both have a moderate presence in Ana’s work, just enough to present chosen motifs as living art objects, establishing a new meaning through their appearance and functionality within the work. Her video work “Art gives me a hard-on,” a play on words and a recording of a woman’s erecting nipple, is an example of such female creativity, so gentle and sincere, yet so heartily funny that it belongs to the top of Croatian video art production. Without pretense to drag us into an intellectual battle with ourselves, and without introducing a surplus of meaning which would defeat the purpose of watching a video, this simple recording and its title are an authentic expression of a creative woman who uses art to comment on the world around her. “Art gives me a hard-on” can work as both a porn movie poster and an art piece, and as such has no trouble cutting the edge of popular and high culture and taking them both for a ride.

Navigating through the medium of word and image, creating artistic value in a beyond-sense space of perception and a dynamic of the observed in works involving polyptych forms, lend themselves to easy reproduction in their simplicity and bare presentation of an idea. Such straightforward presentation reveals the joyful realization that Ana wields her creativity unhindered by high-tech and demanding production. She is simply a woman with ideas who perfected an intuitive approach to creation, one that doesn’t shy from her own fascination with eros, from the banal, or from trivialization of her subject matter.

With all that said, it comes as no surprise that among a plethora of works, “Pussy Smoke” was picked out by the media as a “big deal,” because it contains the right mix of high aesthetics and populism that so sharply divided the Croatian public for a few days. The inflicted gash will heal quickly enough, but a trace will remain for years to bear witness that even highly-aestheticized works can find their way to the general audience.

When we examine a painting, it is for us no more than a visual fact and proof of someone’s action – their ability to represent and visualize the known and unknown world. This world, of course, is not only a world made of forms borrowed from nature or shaped in their likeness, but can also be a visual record of man’s mental processes and thinking in general. Ana Petrović’s exhibited canvases fall in the latter category. Even at first glance, one notices that something is written on them. Text, in its own right, is given equal part as the color and shapes included in the canvas. What does Petrović write? “Luxury,” “Painting,””Pay to touch this painting,” “Pay,” “Pure,” … She visualizes words to make the observer see her paintings as more than just beautiful (artistic) objects, to wonder what else there is “inside” and what to do. Ana’s inscribings can also be experienced as silent imperatives commenting on the world of the painting, the world of visual art, of art in general, but also the commercial world. She ironizes the usual attitude of the observer toward a painting, and also the painting itself and its established tradition as a luxury object to be owned by the artist or buyer.

If culture, and therefore art, is a superstructure of human nature and humanity at large, then consuming art and owning works of art should be an unmistakable sign of the owner’s intellectual sophistication. Reality, however, testifies that this is often not the case. Petrović is aware of this, deciding to use visual commentary to play with visual art and painting through the lens of supply and demand. With a choice of intense colors that capture the viewer’s attention, a painting under the orchestration of Ana Petrović becomes a desirable object ready to enter the commercial dynamic and for which, of course, you have to pay – just to touch it. Alongside paintings dominated by parallel lines in various colors, there are “golden” paintings whose very color signifies they are luxurious objects. We wonder: if touching exhibited paintings is generally not advised (and often forbidden) in museums and galleries, why is Petrović enticing us to touch them, provided we pay for the experience? Petrović’s art is not exclusively focused on painting. Instead, she is known to use a variety of different media. In this case, she used paintings to face the average observer with a fact we often forget – most averagely informed people, when semantically delineating the concept of artwork in their private vocabulary, go no further than subconcepts of painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving, photograph… Installation, video, performance art and other more “lifelike” ways of presenting fall out of focus, do not get discussed, or get interpreted negatively in order to discredit them as works of art. Petrović is aware of that, choosing a luxury painting for which you have to pay a fair and pure price, even to just touch it with the eyes (“pay to touch this painting”). Ana Petrović’s staged inscribings lead us to a kind of painting in which everything begins and ends with an idea. Painting is here literally being used as a medium, a conduit of the author’s ideas by means of textual-visual or visual-textual imperatives. The conceptual basis of her painting invites us to wholeheartedly accept both the conceptual and the visual in the exhibited works because the visual does not limit the conceptual, just like the conceptual does not stifle the visual. On the contrary, in her work this symbiosis achieves its full momentum.

On the unstable nature of scopic field in the works by Ana Petrović

By immersing themselves in the complete transparency of the visual experience, digital communication technologies allow the viewer to lose the sense of the image as he or she was previously acquainted. Image science must notice the consequences of technological changes insofar as ontological questions about images today are shifting from the philosophical to the purely practical domain of everyday life. New problems arise despite the fact that even the fundamental ones have not yet been fully resolved: we are still unable to answer the question “what is an image”, because we either think that this question still resonates with too loud metaphysical overtones, or because we believe that ontological reflection on images can only follow – and not influence – the changes that are happening faster and more significantly every day. How, indeed, can we know what an image is if the conditions of its production and consumption in our time follow completely different paths in relation to different historical periods and their specific pictorial ontologies that seemingly constantly change? The aporia set in this way – namely, that our understanding of the world necessarily occurs either through philosophy or through technology – is facing serious difficulties today.

            Spotting a fundamental, enduring, and timeless dispute over issues related to people’s ability to perceive and understand images suggests the necessity of new dilemmas. One is whether the images are objects in themselves or are they pure transparency? In other words, are they opaque bearers of signs that refer to something outside the images, or is it possible to know their essence in an immediate way – as immanence and presence? I think that the works of Ana Petrović can serve as a prolegomena in contemporary theorizing about images and that they allegorically explain the dramatic changes that have occurred in both image technologies and our experience of imagery in general. To explain what this is about, allow me one (again allegorical) digression that should confirm that all images function in the same way, and what distinguishes them concerns primarily their institutional position which in turn does not affect their ontological status.

            Kaya Silverman in her book The Threshold of the Visible World (1996) argues that Lacan’s concept of the screen as a scopic field needs to be revised to include an expanded idea of ​​culture. She thinks that the screen, understood as something that stands between the viewer and the subject of her or his representation, is a real medium that reflects the dynamic relationship that produces the view within the scopic field. One of her original insights, which relates to Lacan’s theory, would consist in redefining the “gazing triangle” of the famous French psychoanalyst. She talks about the greatest importance of the subject of representation and the moment when the latter looks back at the competing observer, ie the other who watches him; she argues that when the observed object takes the place of the subject in relation to the person being observed, in fact both at the same time (both the observer and the observed) become “objects” in relation to the latter. Namely, the retreated gaze leads to an extremely unstable situation in which the gaze always creates subjectivity, and being seen always leads to the objectification of the subject – to a simultaneous status both as an “eye” and as a “spectacle” (221).

            In that way, the gaze of the one who looks is determined to the same extent, within the scopic field, by the one who gazes back – the object of representation becomes the subject and viceversa. By adding another diagram, inverting it and superimposing it over the first one, Silverman puts greater emphasis on the dynamics of crossing gazes claiming that the one who is been looked upon becomes in turn the observer himself. What mediates between two simultaneous gazes is precisely the “cultural screen”, or the camera “through its alignment with the gaze” (135). I would like to advance this perfectly plausible argument by asking the question: Is it possible to see on some example how this Silverman’s double diagram, in which the looker and the looked change places in turn, actually works? I would like to propose a photograph, more precisely an advertisement for Levi’s jeans which, to my opinion, describes exactly what Silverman is talking about.

            What we see is a very unusual ad: there is no product shown at all (except for a small logo on upper right part of the ad) and there is no depicted enjoyable situation whatsoever or face to which a consumer would like to identify with (all we see are two angry policemen in a police car looking at us – hardly a pleasant thing to anybody). So, this ad definitely doesn’t work in a way we expect an advertisement to work, that is, through identification with pleasurable situations or familiar but distant faces (like celebrities, sport players and other individuals we would like to see in person but never have the opportunity). Instead, the image on this ad shows in a realistic manner the dynamics within the scopic field of an average “looker” – of anybody of us. The policemen in the ad represent what Silverman calls “the social gaze” which is focused upon us and which makes us feel photographically “framed” (135). By analogy, the subject of the picture are not only two policemen, at least not exclusively them but us, the bearers of the simultaneous look.

            This image, probably as its most important aspect, shows the function of the “given–to–be–seen” and our exposition to other’s gaze as a fundamental point for self-identification, not just a mere objectivation. By looking this image we don’t identify with the object of representation to whom our gaze is directed without him/her returning the gaze (which is how most of the ads work) but with ourselves, because the ad implies that wearing Levi’s jeans we, and not somebody in the image, become that usual suspect to whom the policemen’s gaze is directed. This is, of course, just a politically correct commodification of the Medusa myth adapted to the non–conflicting medium of the traditional world of advertising that became extinct with the advent of technology that made it possible in the first place. But we are interested in something else here: how to show that the world we see is not just a cultural construction (ie philosophy, from the aporia mentioned at the beginning), but that the visibility regimes through which we experience reality have always been a matter of technology, regardless of the stage of its development.

            The main feature of the latest works of art by Ana Petrović, which were exhibited in two selections at the Rub Gallery in Slavonski Brod and then at the Knifer Gallery in Osijek, is problematizing physical space in relation to the space bounded by image media. Namely, we perceive image media in everyday life as a way to transform three–dimensional physical space into two–dimensional and then “transferred” or, better said, represented, in another place and at another time. Traditional painting, but also photography and film, and especially modern electronic media, have accustomed us to experiencing the transmission of visual information in a discontinuity that we consider natural. This means that we interpret areas of encounter of space and media, such as the edge of a screen or a projected image, as a necessary cut between that what is there and this here, between before and now, reality and representation. In doing so, we do not pay attention to the fact that reality is limited only by the possibilities of our scopic field, while the reproduced image is limited by the technological predispositions that make it possible at all. In other words, people have always had to abstract from their own scopic field in order to be ready to understand the logic of any visual medium at all.

            Ana Petrović’s works deal with key problems of visual cognition of reality: the limit of man’s field of vision, the role of media–mediated images in the demarcation of reality and representation, and the difference between reality and its image transmission. Of particular interest is the author’s activation of the observer’s gaze, which erases the boundaries of the “fourth wall”, the barrier that separates intra–image and extra–image reality. Unlike the previously described situations that only imply the existence of someone or something outside the image, in the works from the Bite Size series the traditionally untouchable space of the image penetrated reality as a third dimension, as real presence and immanence. In his 1930 work L’immaginaire, Jean–Paul Sartre argued that one of the most important characteristics of images is that they offer the “illusion of immanence” and that only human consciousness allows to be aware of both images as mere objects and images as representations of something not really present. In order to be able to imagine using images to see what is not really present, we must be able to step out of the real world and observe it from a distance. According to Sartre, the perception of an image is possible only if we are not in the image. But what if we are in the image, completely or only partially?

We recognize the artistic transcendence of Ana Petrović – for example, in two works from the Bite Size series – in the fact that they do not fit perfectly into any of the existing models of representation and because the author’s intertwining of immanence and illusion of immanence is their main theme: since artworks combine real things and the pictorial representation of things, their object is not simply present but not entirely imaginary; it is not entirely real but neither is it virtual. They are “on the edge” of what can be technically visualized and what can only be imagined; the problem of defining boundaries and the ability to experience the difference between immanence and virtuality today is a key issue in both image philosophy and visualization technology. The thinner the cut between two incomparable realities, the harder it is to distinguish between the natural world of things and the world of simulacra. Traditional techniques of representation, from painting, photography and film, made this cut first drastic and then less and less noticeable.

The works Opposite Direction, Cutting and Triangle are on a similar track of reference to the edges of the media. In them, the author takes us back to the boundaries of a two–dimensional image in an extremely simple but visually striking way. The edges of the screen, the surface of the wall, the combination of screens and readymade objects remind us of the basic laws of any representation: namely, that it is always different from reality, and if it is so similar that we can no longer recognize the difference, then it is no longer representation. If this does not seem to be a particularly important issue, it is worth recalling one replica from the first season of the TV series Westworld. One of the characters arrives at a high–tech amusement park, a replica of the Wild West, which – alongside the tourists seeking a hyperrealist experience of sex and violence – is inhabited by (seemingly) perfectly designed humanoid robots that move, behave and communicate according to preassigned narratives, that is, computer algorithms. Prior to entering the park, after the visitor had asked one of the hostesses whether she herself was real, her answer went something like this: “If you can’t see the difference, why does it matter?”

When the medium itself becomes an art theme it means that a return to the real world is no longer possible. The journey of no return began in the period of historical avant–garde and early experimental film, and is being completed today. Paradoxically, it was the “desublimation” power of art (Herbert Marcuse, Man of One Dimension, 1964) at the beginning of the twentieth century that pointed to the blurring of boundaries between art and reality, just as the real world is only possible in art today. Ana Petrović’s works draw attention in various ways to the medium itself, to technical images that we consider to be an extension of our senses and that we expect to be invisible, to merge imperceptibly with the medium. By effectively using stylistic figures of irony and metonymy in video installations, photographs and readymade objects, Ana Petrović brings us back to the material aspects of media and reminds us that media (re)construction of reality, which we think is credible, is actually only sensitive and volatile visual information. This artist prepares us for an age in which reality will no longer be limited only by presence and physicality, reminding us that we may no longer be on the edge, but may have already crossed it.

Christian Bromberger writes regarding Marcel Duchamp’s Prière de toucher:

“Prière de toucher” (Please touch)—this is the caption that Marcel Duchamp placed at the bottom of one of his works representing a female breast in relief. In doing so, he facetiously invited visitors to transgress a double taboo: the one that weighs upon certain erotic gestures in public spaces, and the one that frames behavior in museums, where one is “requested not to touch,” with guards and alarms reminding us of this if necessary. “Hands off!”, the English says more succinctly.

[Christian Bromberger, Toucher, in «Terrain», 49, 2007, pp. 5-10, DOI: 10.4000/terrain.5641.]

While the first taboo has been explored many times by contemporary art—think, for example, of VALIE EXPORT’s TAPP und TASTKINO (1968-69)—the second has almost taken the form of a theorization. A few years before Duchamp’s intervention, Franz Glück wrote regarding Adolf Loos, in a passage also cited by Walter Benjamin:

Reading the passage where Goethe deplores the way in which the petty bourgeoisie and many art connoisseurs feel copper engravings and reliefs, he understood that what must be touched cannot be a work of art, and that what is a work of art must be exempt from manipulation.

[Franz Glück, Umriss der Persönlichkeit, in Heinrich Kulka (ed.), Adolf Loos. Das Werk des Architektes, Schroll, Wien 1931, p. 9; cited in Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus (1931).]

 It should be noted, en passant, that Loos is the author of an article titled Hands Off (1917), in which similar ideas are found, though without direct reference to the sense of touch.

 More recently, the Croatian artist Ana Petrović returned to this issue with a series of works titled Pay to Touch this Painting (2010–), in which, besides playing with the aforementioned taboo, she calls into question at least three other aspects:

 The role of the art market in the experience of works: as the artist Vladimir Frelih writes, “if we don’t touch it, we cannot experience the work, and if we do so, we must pay” [Vladimir Frelih, commentary on Pay to Touch this Painting];

 The objecthood of the work: does one touch the object or does one touch the work? And who can afford to touch the work-as-object? In the end, perhaps only the artist?

Sight itself as the privileged sense for experiencing painting: how difficult is it to discern the writing on the surface of the painting? But how would Duchamp react today to seeing his work in a museum, enclosed in a glass case and thus rendered untouchable?

Si prega di toccare

The works of Ana Petrović from the cycle LIFRAM are performed in various media (video, installation, photography, drawing), or rather on the borders of this media, they possess expressed awareness about media in which they are performed, and in all works the author deals with – doing it form different media and means of that media – questioning of film media and generally, the role of the light in them.

In approach to the cycle of works LIFRAM perhaps it would be the most meaningfully to begin with the explanation of the headline which gathers and defines them. The compound “LIFRAM” originated by shortening the English words “light” and “frame”. Encyclopedic footnote defines frame as a single static image “in the sequence of the same kind, from which the film tape, respectively projected film, is made of.”  The Film Lexicon explains further: “Particular stringing of those images results with illusory movement, respectively the effect of the film projection.”  If we try to define general characteristics of the works exhibited (Non Visual Film, LIFRAM1, the series of the photos Without Title, LIFRAM Daumenkino) we see that they are (with centeredness of all works on the questioning of the film media): reduced and clearly defined method, consistent application of that method, the repeating structure and minimalist aesthetics.

   In the text, I will focus on the last works from the upper line. The series of the photos Without Title consists of five photos of the projector light during film projection. All five photos of the projector light were filmed in the same way: the projector and the projection surface are outside visible field, observer’s distance and (horizontal) camera angle are identical. As an interesting thing, I will say that the film was projected at the time of photographing of famous work of Stanley Kubrick Barry Lyndon from 1975. But the motive of the photos is exclusively the light as a structural material of the film. So this phenomenon, which typically doesn’t attracts attention, which is somewhere in the background of our attention during film projection, is brought to the focus of interest, respectively made the only and central, so that its autonomous existence is noticed. Inconsistently and in other circumstances hardly intractable beams of light on the five photos, taken in dark room, become accessible to the view in some moments of its fluctuation, getting its own visual qualities. So light itself, respectively its spreading between projector and projection surface, becomes the content of the picture, so we see, because of the seriality of the photos, changes of its forms and colours, depending on various scenes from the film. The impulses for focusing on the light of projector could be the works of the British-American artist Anthony McCall, who does the researches of sculpturality of light in time, using projectors in dark environments, starting from the first installation of the kind Line Describing a Cone from 1973. Though, with approaching to the works of the mentioned predecessor on this (partially different) principles, researches of the nature of film images by Ana Petrović in the cycle LIFRAM, are originally and moving in other ways.

Series of works LIFRAM Daumenkino starts from discovery which belongs to the film prehistory, therefore to the time of film nonexistence. German word “Daumenkino” doesn’t have equivalent in Croatian language, and its literary translation would be “movie for a thumb” or “thumb movie”. Series of works LIFRAM Daumenkino is performed in the form of simple little booklets, with drawings on their pages, made in little shifts, which make an illusion of movement when we quickly leaf through them, respectively an animated sequence is made. Many know such booklets as a toy from childhood, but what makes difference from three exhibited booklets of Ana Petrović to the ones we know is that we will not find some moving figures; namely, „main character“ in them is a light. There are reduced black and white geometric drawings made with marker and corrector on the pages, whose repeatedly variations simulate different light effects. Each one of the three booklets is exhibited without the title, and visual phenomena which we follow in them are the effect of turning off the TV as it shows on the screen, cars headlights passing from the opposite direction on the unlighted road…I leave the detection of the content  of the third booklet from the series to the visitor. Exhibited on the pedestal with remark to the visitors to leaf through the pages, the booklets invite to be taken into hands, to be felt under the fingers, to be viewed according to own wish and in individual way.

Luka Kuveždić

Ana Petrović exhibits monochrome painting called Blizzard. Paint used is gold acrylic. The work of Ana Petrović is a conceptualization of a long title of a painting made by J. M. W. Turner from 1842. The text that stands with the painting (which is an integral part of the artwork) explains why Turner had named his painting with an unusual long title Snow Storm – Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel Left Harwich. The title that took roots is Snow Storm – Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth. Turner was, as the author explains, using his fingers and nails for the process of painting, brushstrokes are visible, but the thing that is not so visible is the ship itself which, according to the title, should be leaving the harbor. Equally so, on the golden painting of Ana Petrović are barely visible the letters with which she brings out title of Turner’s painting. The letters are the same color as the background and have mild creases which are present because of more layers of the same paint. The title is visible only from immediate proximity. Turner, insisting that painting can only emerge from paint and not from depicting scene, was on the threshold of abstract painting in the mid-19 th century. Meanwhile, the power of imagination has pierced through the models which depict painting as a blueprint of reality and it has became possible to paint a painting with only one color, as Ana Petrović does, not painting objects but letters.   

Words are the same matter as a painting. Do we see them differently? The problem of relationship between words, things and pictures has been articulated by Foucault in his essay about Renéa Magrittea’s painting. Those complex questions Ana Petrović reopens- starting at a very different postulates from Foucault. In that is, among other, the value of this painting.

The works of Ana Petrović to be exhibited in Split—Triangle, Torn Time, Star Sky, Other Reality, and Cutting—suggest by their very titles the fundamental thread of Ana’s artistic research: combining different media to create a new reality. In her works, the artist combines photography, video, sound, and ready-made objects, while playing with the installation itself. She presents objects found within the photographs in their physical form within the space, or alters them in various ways, thereby playing with the viewer’s eye and, in a sense, stretching or introducing new dimensions to the media in which she creates. A shared vision present in every work is a unique approach to reality in order to emphasize the display of the visual, which is multi-medially manipulated, tilted, rounded—exceeding standard frames at the boundary between reality and representation, actuality and its visual transmission.

Art often combines reality and its representation, situated somewhere between what is technically possible to visualize and what is only possible to imagine; the problem of defining the boundaries and the ability to perceive the difference between immanence and virtuality is a key question today for both the philosophy of the image and visualization technologies. The thinner the cut between two incomparable realities, the harder it is to distinguish between reality and the world of simulacra. Traditional techniques of representation, from painting to photography and film, initially made this cut drastic, then increasingly less noticeable. Following a similar path of referencing the edges of the medium are the works Cutting and Triangle. In them, the artist—in a simple yet visually striking way—returns us within the boundaries of the two-dimensional image, but that is only at first glance. Let us look closer. The edges of the screen, the surface of the wall, and the combination of displays and ready-made objects remind us of the fundamental laws of every representation: namely, that it is always different from reality itself, which is precisely what the artist engages with and draws our attention to in her works. She prompts us to look more carefully, more closely, more in detail—showing that the visual is broader than it appears at first glance.

In the catalog Ana Petrović: On the Edge (Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek, 2022), Krešimir Purgar discusses Ana’s work by comparing it to an interesting detail from the first season of the series Westworld: “One of the characters arrives at a high-tech theme park, a replica of the Wild West, which—alongside tourists seeking a hyperrealistic experience of sex and violence—is inhabited by (seemingly) perfectly designed humanoid robots that move, behave, and communicate according to pre-set narratives or computer algorithms. Before entering the park, after a visitor asks one of the hosts if she herself is real, her answer was something like this: ‘If you can’t tell the difference, why does it matter?'”

In her video installations, photographs, and through ready-made objects, Ana Petrović warns us precisely about where we draw the line today between the real and the imaginary, whether we want it to exist, and how clear and/or necessary it is to us. We already live in a world of simulacra, in a society of the spectacle, and it seems to me most important to have our own boundaries—or to decide not to have them and surrender to all the visual and other stimuli that constantly surround us. Ana shows us the way she plays with them.

They are to the International Danube Festival as the Minster is to Ulm. Equally beloved by guests, locals, and petty thieves alike, are the bright flags that, in a biennial rhythm, line the banks of the river like a colorful parade. On each occasion, they are designed by selected artists from the Danube countries, and the waving pennants, visible from far and wide, mark the site of a significant creative cooperation and intercultural exchange. This year, the popular Danube ensigns appear in a flag design. While flags – often with rich, decorative symbolism and heraldry – have developed throughout our cultural history into landmarks of identification or victorious trophies for corporations, soldiers or military units, flags have always been a visual method to transmit information, often over a great distance. In the interests of easy identification and rapid readability, the design of flags was and is marked by the abstract two-dimensional arrangement of colors, surfaces and symbols and reduced into a strictly geometrical form.

Flags have occupied visual art since the moment in the twentieth century when, through abstraction, a formal connection to fine art was recognized. Lying behind the iconisation of the Black Square by Kasimir Malevich (1879-1935) there is both an acknowledgment and an urge to use the form as an ensign. While concrete art and minimalism, constructivism and colour-field painting are aimed at dispelling the symbolic meaning of art, they always speak the language of flags and comparable carriers of meaning.

The two artists chosen this year are Ana Petrović, who studied at the Academy of Arts in Osijek, Croatia, and Bosiljka Zirojević Lečić, who teaches at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia. Representing a younger generation, these two artists come together in Ulm, beyond the images of civil war and religious enemies, to create a work of cultural understanding. For their flag installations, both have used language and aspects of our complex system of global communication as their theme.

On a daily basis, we encounter letters, words and texts in combination with images, in a variety of forms. Ever since the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, there has been an increasing  infiltration of literature, applied art, the visual arts, writing and language, and letters and numbers as artistic material and elements of creativity. As a result, the boundaries between the visual and the verbal have dissipated, with text becoming an independent pictorial medium, artistic gesture, comment or symbol.

“Typography can, in certain circumstances, be art”. Without a doubt, this proposition made in 1930 by the fine artist and graphic artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) applies to the project concepts of Ana Petrović and Bosiljka Zirojević Lečić. Their artistic contribution to  the International Danube Festival draws attention to the diversity of peoples along the river – both linguistic diversity and the possibility of non-verbal, visual communication.

Ana Petrović uses her painted flag cloths in a wide range of 17 different colours, depicting 309 times the term “borderless” in the different languages of the Danube countries, the Danube river basin, as well as in English, as a global language. Whereas, on her 351 flags, Bosiljka Zirojević Lečić employs a combined system of colour sequences and the name of the Danube, Danube countries and cities, translated into Morse code.

As a waterway and transport route, the Danube passes through different countries and landscapes, as if without borders, from its source to the Black Sea. Overcoming the power of the river and building bridges between shores posed a great challenge to the people of bygone eras. Today, the Danube stands as a European symbol for overcoming national and cultural borders. In this regard, the multi-lingual flags of Ana Petrović send out a signal, which is visible from far and wide, and appeals to our similarities. Borderless – this word extends like a mantra, in new colours and languages, stretching over a kilometre on the Neu-Ulm riverbank, between the two Danube bridges. As much as the billowing cloths are exposed to the uncertainties of wind and weather, just so sensitively must the international achievements of our time be protected from political-social uncertainties and hardships.

On the Ulm side, the festive flags with the designs of Bosiljka Zirojević Lečić employ a surprising amount of symbolic abstraction. Out of her graphic play, with its ciphers of Morse code – dot, dash, pause, the artist develops 330 flags, using the respective national colours in a vertical arrangement, representing the names of the Danube, its riparian states and cities, each using one letter, and arranged in eleven groups. Here, typography becomes a sensuous structure made up of predominantly geometric surface areas. In their formal aesthetic appearance, the series of Morse code flags with their sharply demarcated, stencil-like, flat paint work can be compared to the Hardedge painting of the late 1950s. The content of these purpose-oriented compositions sensitizes us to the complexity of communication strategies in the past and present;  to the possibilities and impossibilities of language and its essential meaning in life.
Without borders.

When Ana Petrović Invites us to pay to touch her painting, she does not mean that there is a fine if we touch it. However, the artist is literally playing with our imagination and the conventional rules of behavior towards an art work, for example in a museum or gallery. It is not even an invitation but an order from which we cannot deviate. Namely, if we don’t touch it, we cannot experience the work, and if we do so, we must pay. Cynicism as a concept. The cynicism (Greek: κυνισμός, Latin: cynici) of today sometimes only has few arguments. Anisten, the founder of cynical philosophy never student of Socrates and Diogenes unencumbered of religious platitudes, despised the general opinion, social conventions and material wealth, which the regarded as the source of all human misery. Live like a dog, in accordance with nature, exercise their basic needs. The modern cynic has a more negative perception of human beings that is arrogant, coarse, indecent and he frankly warns of imposing its position. He is above all, unpleasant. The society of freedom and untruth cannot stand to hear the naked truth. Do we really not care about the truth? Most would say that they do, but gently, at selected times and with words carefully chosen and maybe not the whole truth. Last month on Croatian national television, on the TV show ”Sunday at two o’clock”, the host Aleksandar Stanković asked young politician Marijana Petir if she is a honest politician. We can guess the answer. We are a society of sweet lies, in which social norms and laws are based on a lie. Lying is an instrument that works. Is the democracy of the beginning of the 21st century more equitable than that of Greece from the 5th century BC?

Who needs cynics in our time? Pay to touch this painting , Ana Petrović painted conceptually dealing with the problem of painting itself and extension of the series Pay to touch this drawing from 2010. The artist takes us back to the very essence, to the structure of the artistic message, that does not necessarily exist.  On one level it is a painting without dramatically, even though we are asked to act and are cautioned that without acting we do not fulfill the only functionality of the primary experience of the art work. On the second level of interaction of the picture, I begin to take action. The cynicism of the art has a healing effect on our over- standardized personality. Without the deception it is easier to ignore the cynical art then human beings, but art has a longer shelf life, we can ignore it and return to it optionally and it still awaits us mercilessly fresh.

Let the transition last at least as long as evolution. Art of geographical boundaries of art is even worse fiction.  Pay to touch this painting is also an intellectual message of the whole social transition spectrum of us here and us there.