Tag Archives: Zagreb

Legacy of the Trabant and other cars of Socialism

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“Take them, please!” is part of the message from the above cartoon, part of a larger series seen at ArtMarket Budapest (sorry, I’m not sure whose work it is). And the relationship to the the Soviet-era tin cans that passed (and pass) for transportation is an ambivalent one of fondness and frustration. Perhaps that’s why they keep being thrown up, whole and entire, as contemporary sculptural pieces.

Simon Starling, Flaga, installation shot at the New Museum

These aren’t John Chamberlain’s crushed car part sculptures. Rather they preserve and put the entirety of the Socialist-era cars, known for their poor design, safety, and performance, on view in a way that seems to present then as beloved cultural objects as much as anything else. Czech artist David Černý had some fun with it with his sculpture ‘Quo vadis.’

David Czerny, Quo Vadis

Perhaps this Trabant, a car driven here in Hungary but also in the Czech Republic, runs better on legs.

Street art in Zagreb

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There was street art all over Zagreb, in random nooks and crannies of Croatia’s capital.  In addition to the illicit tags and wheatpastes, I saw a lot of big, colorful murals, like in the Museum of Street Art, but also outside the city center in neighborhoods like Siget, where the intervention in the public space felt like it was oriented toward benefiting the local community.

Here are some of the things I came across:

I also “visited” the Museum of Street Art, which is actually a project from a few years ago where many local artists painted a long stretch of wall in the city center near the train station. This ongoing project can now be found all over the city, and I love the community spirit and enthusiasm that fuels it.

AND…the Sheepist has been here too!

Slides and More at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

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Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

When in Zagreb, I stayed an extra night to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, housed in this new building, which was perhaps not intuitively laid out or well lit in the temporary exhibition spaces, but overall was large and interesting.

Their collection naturally focuses on Croatian artists, and I found their documentation from the Fluxis period–an interest of mine–especially strong. Overall the thematic curation was interrupted by a temporary installation of design pieces of Karim Rashid, complete with big video screen of him talking about his work, which I found distracting and repetitive, seeing as it was on every floor of the permanent collection. There were some outstanding artists from Croatia whose work I really enjoyed getting to see for the first time, including:

Mladen Stilonavic, 1993

 

1950s photography of Zvonimir Brkan, From Liliput and Fisherman

Milislav Mio Vesovic, Photo-sequence of the action “Zagreb, I love you!”

Zlatko Kopljar, K9 Compassion, 2005 (series of 5 photographs where the artist kneels in front of Parliament buildings)

But then, how can you not like a museum that you exit via Carsten Holler’s permanent double slide installation?