15.01. - 31.01.2013.

Goran Vranić: Portret grada Zvijezde - Portrait of the Star City

Muzej Mimara ima čast pozvati vas na otvorenje izložbe fotografija:

Portret grada Zvijezde
u utorak, 15. siječnja 2013. u 19 sati.

"Baveći se Karlovcem, Goran Vranić motive pronalazi u staroj karlovačkoj jezgri - Zvijezdi i njezinoj blizini. S odmjerenim poštovanjem fotografski bilježi tragove vremena nataložene oplemenjujućim mirnim tijekom bogatog gradskog života, ali i one nastale u kontekstu dramatičnih zastoja vezanih uz ratno razaranje devedesetih, posvemašnje siromaštvo i opustjelost. Njegove fotografije nude „ubrane“ plodove obilja s pročelja građanskih kuća- koji šetačima često izmiču. Ulazeći u vlažna karlovačka dvorišta, zastajući na trgu osluškujući jeku njegove praznine, koračajući ulicama, zaboravljenu i zanemarenu ljepotu grada pronašao je u oronulim i prašnim, ispucalim i trošnim funkcionalnim i dekorativnim elementima stare gradske arhitekture, ali i u onom trenutnom ritmu životne svakodnevnice opredmećenom loncem rascvjetalog cvijeća, platnenom prozorskom zavjesom ili paukovom mrežom na prašnjavom reljefu. Poveden čarolijom svjetla i sjene zabilježio je osobni doživljaj stare Zvijezde i njezinog današnjeg prašnjavog sjaja. Krećući se unutar ovog okvira, Vranić i nije učinio drugo nego portretirao suvremenu stvarnost grada oslonjenu i uronjenu u 433 godine postojanja grada. Fotografirajući oblikovno bogatstvo sačuvano na obrazima karlovačkih kuća neizravno je rasvjetlio i sadašnjost koju grad živi. Interpretacijom odabranih motiva grada, stvorio je fotografska svjedočanstva suvremenog karlovačkog ozračja te upečatljivo pokazao neraskidivost prostora, vremena i života...."

Antonija Škrtić, GM Karlovac

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Portrait of the Star City
In this exhibition and the catalogue that accompanies it, Karlovac Municipal Museum presents the most recent photographic cycle with which art photographer Goran Vranić is continuing his long-term engagement with the photographic interpretation of details of the architecture and urban design of Croatian cities – of Zagreb (1994), Pakrac and Lipik (1996), Koprivnica (2007) and Dubrovnik (2008). There are many links between Goran Vranić and Karlovac, and the tie that is revealed on this occasion is derived from the dynamic interrelationship between artist/photographer and his model, the city. The dynamics of constant re-examination and discovery, recognition and reflection have resulted in photographic compositions of wide-ranging city vistas, often lyrical in mood, in concert with concentrated, sometimes practically abstract, photographic compositions of architectural details.

In dealing with Karlovac, Goran Vranić has found subjects in the old core of the city – the Star and its immediate vicinity. With measured respect, he photographically records the traces of time deposited by the ennobling, calm course of the rich life of the city as well as those that arose in the context of the dramatic hold-ups related to the wartime destruction of the nineties, with its concomitant widespread impoverishment and devastation. His photographs set before us the gathered fruits of plenitude from the elevations of burgher houses – which often evade the passer by. Entering the damp courtyards of Karlovac blocks, stopping on the square to listen to the echo of its emptiness, pacing along the streets, he has found the forgotten and neglected beauty of the city in the dilapidated, dusty, cracked and decrepit functional and decorative elements of the old town’s architecture, as well as in the current rhythm of the vital quotidian objectified in the pot of flowers in bloom, in the cotton curtain over a window or the spider web on a dusty relief. Prompted by the magic of light and shadow, he has recorded his personal experience of the old Star Fortress and its dusty glory of today. Moving within this framework, Vranić has done nothing but portray the contemporary reality of the city based on and steeped in the 433 years of the city’s existence.

Photographing the formal richness preserved on the faces of Karlovac houses, he has indirectly lit up the present that the city lives. In interpreting the selected motifs of the city, he has created photographic testimonies of the contemporary atmosphere of Karlovac and shown strikingly the inseparability of space, time and life.

The overall artistic oeuvre of Goran Vranić is closely connected with and marked by his day-to-day professional work as a photographer who specialises in objects of the moveable and immovable material cultural heritage and contemporary fine art. His affinity for the traces of human presence and activity in space and time have also motivated him in his artistic activity, which is marked by an unobtrusive patience in creativity and great integration and expression in the cycles created. Vranić’s previous engagement with small boats, with dry stone walls and cities – among which he has, with this cycle of photographs and this exhibition, placed the city of Karlovac, has turned them into authentic criteria of humanity, into testimonies of a space and a time, into portraits of life.

Antonija Škrtić, GM Karlovac