Loan of artworks from the Collection de l'Art Brut at the Museum of contemporary art Zagreb

Artworks by Raphaël Lonné, Madge Gill, Anna Zemankova, Eugene Gabritchevski, Laure Pigeon and Scottie Wilson take place within the exhibition The Forest Unbowed and Radovan Ivšić, at the Museum of contemporary art Zagreb.

The The Forest Unbowed exhibition is dedicated to Radovan Ivšić, a prominent Croatian surrealist poet and playwright. In his oeuvre, in particular in the poem Narcis (Narcissus) (1942), in his best known and most influential play Gordogan (1943) and in later works – the collections of poetry Bunar u kuli (Well in the Tower) and Crno (Black) (1974) – Ivšić thematises the forest as a multi-layered and ambiguous space profuse with fascinating mental and visual messages.

The exhibition is conceived as five thematic cycles: The Devastated Forest -  Imagination Menaced - A Forest of Endless Beginning - Point of Dislocation - A Forest of Transformations and A Forest of Signs and Lighting.
Based on the ideas and inspiration of the exhibition authors the first thematic cycle presents the issue of the destruction and neglect of forests and of a dearth of ecological awareness of the need for preservation and development. The second thematic cycle offers a very symbolic take on the primordial origins of the forest, while the third cycle looks at the forest as the dominant motif of composition – as powerful, mysterious and disconcerting… The fourth thematic cycle is shot through with the connections between the dark powers of the forest and old customs and leads to the fifth in which the topic of the forest is drawn closer to a coupling of love, humanity and poetry, the convergence of the conscious and unconscious, the permanent and transient, the real and imagined, truth and delusion.

The thematic circles will unite just under two hundred works from the 17th century to the present day, and include drawings, prints, oils, gouaches, lithographs, photographs, mixed media, ink prints, videos and many other media.


Musée of contemporary art Zagreb
Av. Dubrovnik 17,
10000 Zagreb
Croatia
24 september thru 22 november, 2015

 

Publish Date: 24.09.2015