The 18th edition of the SintArt Project hosts Hana Miletić, Croatian artist who lives in Belgium and who is developing an artistic language based primarily on the creation of textual works, Scottish visual artist Graham Kelly based in Belgium and The Netherlands, who is presenting his work to the Croatian public for the first time with the film titled Hello Joe, and CIMO (Center for Research of Fashion and Clothing) from Zagreb. Miletić contemplates the social and cultural reality in which she lives and works by using the weaving process. Through her weaving practice, she reproduces social gestures of maintaining and repairing infrastructure, and different objects in various states of transition. The focus of this exhibition, as well as the study of the bequeathed Collection of Vjenceslav Richter and Nada Kareš Richter, is the relationship between the private and public space of the Collection. Special attention is given to the intimate space of the apartment that forms part of the Collection, and within which the artists create a dialogue by temporarily exchanging the Collection’s artworks with their own.
This is the 15th year that the cycle of periodical exhibitions of the SintArt Project is being held as a part of the exhibition activities of the Collection of Vjenceslav Richter and Nada Kareš Richter. The former workspace of architect and artist Vjenceslav Richter, located on the ground floor of his family home, was renovated at the beginning of the year 2000 and turned into an exhibition space. Its purpose was to present artworks from the bequeathed Collection, along with new artworks by contemporary artists of the middle and younger generations. In their artworks, created through different kinds of media, visiting artists have referred to the different areas of Richter’s production, from architectural projects and artworks to theoretical texts, even proposing new interpretations of Richter’s work, and the Collection itself. The SintArt Project stems from Richter’s idea and proposal that his Collection becomes an active space, open to research and experimentation, a space for cultural content that communicates with artists and the local community. Within the 18th SintArt cycle, in cooperation with Graham Kelly and the Center for Research of Fashion and Clothing (CIMO), Hana Miletić presents site-specific textile, spatial, video, and textual interventions in the space of the Richter Collection. The authors are temporarily exchanging some elements of the interior, or rearranging their positioning and function, while also creating new relationships and meanings between the exhibition, work, and private spaces of the Collection, connecting them into a new interpretative whole.
Loosely weaved curtains with geometrical patterns, which evoke a transparency grid, allow light to enter the private living space on the first floor, creating a new perspective for viewing the existing, and well known environment. The same curtains reappear in the exhibition space on the ground floor of the house, highlighting certain structural elements of the architecture, while at the same time creating a new rhythm of movement and a new dynamic within that space. Along with the subtle insertion of this textile into the intimate space, the artists perform yet another gesture –they include Richter’s own sculpture entitled Nada (1957), based on the principle of tension as a structural idea, and assembled from industrially generated elements (steel cable, wires, screws) which point to one another in a uniform rhythm. It is only by careful observation that the viewer discovers that the object defies the laws of nature. The exhibition space of the Collection on the ground floor presents the video work of Graham Kelly, which was created in secret in several rented Airbnb’s, and which presents, translates, and combines discovered elements recorded within several private homes, therefore creating a kind of archive that questions the value of privacy, and what is private. Kelly’s second work is presented on a television screen in the private space of the Collection, on the first floor of the house. It repeats views of an object from Kelly’s video in a loop. Continuing this study of the private parts of the living space shared by Vjenceslav Richter and Nada Kareš Richter, the CIMO has selected about ten objects that form part of the original inventory of the house, processed and classified them through a combination of factographic, personal, and speculative description, presented in the style of the museological inventorying of objects in a museum’s custody. In this way, for example, CIMO has selected some blankets and rugs from the bedroom, the wardrobe of Nada Kareš Richter, as well as some wall and table textiles, all of which were processed through sensory (visual, haptic), and personal reflections. By focusing on the private, on certain personal items, clothing, and furniture, even on their interpretation, we pay more attention to the role of Nada Kareš Richter in the very space of the house, her presence in the creation of its interior, and her contribution and support in the formation of the environment of today’s Richter Collection.
Curators: Morana Matković, Ana Škegro
This program has been executed with the support of the City of Zagreb, and the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media. This project is realized with the support of the European Union’s Culture Moves Europe program.
SintArt 18: Hana Miletić and Graham Kelly with CIMO - a dialogue with Nada Kareš Richter and Vjenceslav Richter
Opening: 24thMay 2025, 12:00 (noon)
Exhibition duration: 24thMay – 24thAugust 2025
The Collection of Vjenceslav Richter and Nada Kareš Richter, Vrhovec 38
Opening hours of the Richter Collection: Wednesday / Saturday: 11am– 4pm (on other days only with prior notice)
