Exhibition history

Possibilities for 2023 – Arcades Project by Željko Beljan

04.07.2023. - 06.09.2023. / MSU, Black Box

In the last few years, in his artistic practice, Željko Beljan has been focusing almost exclusively on handicraft and its position in contemporary artistic practices, where he explores craft techniques as an artistic medium. Traditional handicraft techniques have been rooted in his family for generations, and have been present in his life from his early years. But it was only through his research of the contemporary craft that he realized its strength and interesting position at the dividing line between everyday functional objects and artistic objects. The Arcades Project arose as a result of his interest in a wide range of materials in the context of a practice dedicated to handicraft—in addition to his work with textiles, while creating board games, he works with wood by hand, where he explores the relationship between handiwork and amateur, hobbyist participation in sports (and games in general), placing an emphasis on the participation and involvement of the audience in the realization of his works.

Modern Contemporary

04.07.2023. - 03.09.2023. / MSU, 2. kat

Modern Contemporary / Collection as a verb: Triggers

Modern Contemporary builds upon the first exhibition from 1955 with which the City Gallery of Contemporary Art (today's Museum of Contemporary Art) started its exhibition activity. It was an exhibition from the holdings which presented a selection of the first acquired works.

The exhibited works had been purchased from exhibitions and studios during 1954 and 1955. The gallery’s acquisitions strived, in line with their possibilities, to follow, i.e. document the dynamics of contemporary art life. The exhibition was complemented by several older exhibits, which laboured towards contemporary European painting of the time or spoke about individual authors’ typical stages.

Arseny Zhilyaev: In the Days of War

23.05.2023. - 27.08.2023. / MSU, 2. kat

The title of the exhibition, "In the Days of War," was taken from a painting by the prominent socialist realist Geliy Korzhev (1925-2012). The artwork, also titled "In the Days of War," marked a significant milestone in the artist's career was completed in 1954. It was during this year that the City Gallery of Contemporary Art (later known as the Museum of Contemporary Art) was established in Zagreb by a group of artists and cultural innovators. These events occurred one year after the death of Joseph Stalin and two years prior to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR, which is renowned for Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" denouncing the personality cult and dictatorship of the former Soviet leader.

Nika Autor in cooperation with Newsreel Front presents Red Forests

16.05.2023. - 25.06.2023. / MSU, Black Box

The razor wire is one of the most gruesome symbols of fortifying the borders of the European Union. Unlike barbed wire which is designed to prevent movement, the razor wire was created using galvanized steel with the sole intention of maiming. Thousands of people on the move have lost their lives while trying to bypass the borders of the European Union by drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, suffocating in the trucks of smugglers or perishing on the razor wire that surrounds Europe.

Malčić Goes to MSU

06.04.2023. - 03.05.2023. / MSU, 1. kat povremenih izložbi

A selection of paintings from Ivica Malčić’s new cycles is a result of his ongoing activity and painterly transformation of daily life. It is also part of Malčić’s long-time artistic concept – his attempt to make at least a hundred new paintings every year. 

Jasmina Cibic: The dreams we call our own

04.04.2023. - 07.05.2023. / MSU, Black Box

Jasmina Cibic’s artistic practice spans across film, performance and installation and rigorously interrogates the aesthetics of politics. Her works are situated within architectural settings of national pride and power, from state assemblies to cultural monuments, and draw on historical events and individuals that determine shared conceptions of identity. She continuously examines artistic production in terms of its relationship to propaganda and ideology. Through this she identifies the ways in which culture is instrumentalised and who it is intended to serve. In her recent projects, Cibic has been investigating political gifting of cultural objects, artworks and architectures that personified hope and solidarity during the plight of self-determination of nations and emerging political identities.  

MAJA SMREKAR, JONAS JØRGENSEN !brute_force: Soft Resilience

04.04.2023. - 30.04.2023. / MSU, 1. kat povremenih izložbi

*Opening hours of the exhibition are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

!brute_force is an ongoing research platform interrogating forms of governance instituted by AI through structured models of reality. Established in 2019 by Maja Smrekar, the project stemmed from the premise that humans and nonhumans are no longer embedded in a dualist frame, but levelled within the global infrastructure of the market economy and the techno-capitalist commodification of life.  

Sandra Sterle: Figments of Time / Prividi vremena

21.02.2023. - 26.03.2023. / MSU, Black Box

Sandra Sterle is working with the processes of performing and multimedia installations based on experimental film structure. Figments of Time is focused on her ongoing practice of biographical research, archiving and self-archiving in linear and non linear forms of relating to documentation and memory.  Her discourse revolving around her relationship with her grandfather formulates a non-linear film-structure with installation units that can be seen as separate entities or fragments that are assembled together to form a single unit. A possible layer of her long term project and current exhibition is an attempt  to read her own art practice through her granfather’s biography. (From the text of Olivia Nițiș)

From Individual Projections to Collective Memory - Darko Bavoljak and Igor Grubić to Marijan Crtalić

10.01.2023. - 12.02.2023. / MSU, Black Box

The exhibition is conceived as an intimate, artistic and curatorial homage to the activity of the prematurely deceased multimedia artist Marijan Crtalić (1968 - 2020). His artistically articulated activism continuously reflected the socio-political narratives of his hometown of Sisak. When we get the opportunity to see Marijan Crtalić’s work today, we understand that this work represents an indispensable and quite concrete contribution to the valorisation and re-actualisation of the legacy of Socialism, in the direction of active negotiations with the present, but also as the foundation for any critical deliberation on the future.

SintArt 15 - Mario Mu: The Sun, the Mast, or Gravity

21.12.2022. - 26.02.2023. / Zbirka Richter

Opening: 21/12 at 7 pm

"Looking at the course of a river from an airplane, I was often intrigued by the drawing the river made in the ground it flowed through. Some parts were so artistic that you only had to frame and sign them. That, of course, would be pure theft, because the image is created by the river, the ground, and gravity. The author is nature."
(V. Richter, Gravitational Drawing, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2001)