EXHIBITION
Premijere 45
LOCATION
Loggia Gallery, Split, Croatia
DATE
2015
MEDIA
Various sculptures and objects, UV lamps
Photo: Denis Vitaljić ©
“and the only light is in our hands.“ 2015
In the suggestive play of light and shadow Engelmann reveals the semantic potential of her new work, which bears the innocent name “Game”. Behind this banal name lies a far more serious artistic concept that questions the entire approach to art history as an institutionalized collective memory of the aesthetic sensations of a particular historical moment. With her work, the artist revives the gallery of the rejected and “insufficient”. The “good” works, both her own and those of her academy colleagues, have placed the flip side of the entire history of art abstractly in the exhibition space – within the historically established paradigm of art there is no place for the “less good”. The author completely destroys their artistic autonomy through the use of UV light, thus reducing their individual imperfections to the common denominator of “artistic waste”. Moreover, the use of a UV lamp emphasizes the distinct subjectivity of the perception of a work of art. The visitor enters the exhibition space individually and, using the UV lamp as a kind of paintbrush, transforms it into his or her private canvas. The fragile realm of light and shadow creates a fluid artwork that depends entirely on the subjective intention and experience of the viewer. More
Curated by Ana Žanko