Antun Motika and the legacy of experimentation

www.mmsu.hr

The Projections exhibition encompass the less known and researched opus of experiments by Antun Motika and works of his contemporaries from Croatia and the international scene linking him with the experiment in moving images (Stan Brakhage, Zlatko Hajdler, Aleksandar Srnec) and those who point to the innovative and anticipatory potential of his lumino-experiments in the context of contemporary production (Juliana Borinski, Ana Hušman and Ivan Marušić Klif, Goran Petercol, Davor Sanvincenti and Silvo Šarić).

Motika’s experiments were continuously created from the beginning of the 1940s to the mid-1980s. In this period they were exhibited only once, in the Zagreb gallery Centar in 1968 under the title of Light reflections. 

The first presentation of this part of Motika’s opus in Rijeka is a logical continuation of his delayed, but now certain revalorisation, being that only since the end of the first decade of the 21st century, has this part of his opus begun to be respected and considered on a par with his painting, if not even more innovative in the consideration of visual language. In order that we illustrate such a point of view, we have conceived the exhibition as being collective by incorporating analogue and digital techniques of work in regard to acoustic ambiences, light installations, photography and film. On the basis of Motika’s drawings there will be two lumino-kinetic objects exhibited, reconstructed by Filip Beusan. The exhibition Projections presents a fragmented panorama of light from projectors, bulbs and dark chambers, placing Motika on the line of the continuity of experimental practices.

Artists: Antun Motika, Stan Brakhage, Zlatko Hajdler, Aleksandar Srnec, Juliana Borinski, Ana Hušman and Ivan Marušić Klif, Goran Petercol, Davor Sanvincenti and Silvo Šarić.