With the exhibition A Stone on a Branch at the Josip Račić Gallery, visual artist Amela Frankl continues her complex artistic project Black Glass on the Way, that she intends to develop in different media and disciplines in several consecutive exhibitions, in various exhibition spaces. Her multidisciplinary artistic practice includes everything from painting to social sculpture, from creating an art object to participatory performative events, regularly personal life situations and family history.
The framework of the exhibition is a series of posters, about which the art historian and exhibition curator Branko Franceschi writes in the foreword of the exhibition: The posters, as a dialogue between the artist and the designers,are based on performative black and white photographs focused on the figure, gesture and facial expression of the artist, in order to demonstrate the intensity of her inner dialogue processes. Direct and confessional statements delivered as unexpectedly witty colloquial phrases, in more or less rhyming stanzas and uniform font and position, are placed at the bottom of the visual as their integral part, much like film subtitles. In a steady rhythm, similar to a film reel or a photo-novel, the posters completely saturate the parameters of the exhibition space. - and continues: Two video works with sounds and colours that refer to the context of Mauritania, are presented as a discursive pair to this uniform, black-and-white series of static situations. The first, PK22, presents a recording of the physically demanding local fishing method, which can easily be interpreted, from a Western voyeuristic perspective, as an exciting choreography. The second, titled the Last Motif but One, is a performance of the artist’s direct confrontation with the vast desert landscape on the edge of a beaten road that meanders into space until it exits the frame.
Amela Frankl’s A Stone on a Branch exhibition that the National Museum of Modern Art will present at the Josip Račić Gallery from 31 st May – 2nd July is conceived and set-up by the NMMU director, Branko Franceschi.
Artist’s biography
Amela Frankl is a visual artist, born in Zagreb in 1963. She obtained a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. She is a member of the Croatian Freelance Artists Association. She lives and works in Zagreb. More information on her work: www.amelafrankl.com
Reproduction:
Amela Frankl, A Stone on a Branch, 2022./2023.
Poster series, digital print on paper, jet coat 200 gr, 70 x 50 cm
Videostill: Miran Krčadinac
Poster design: BilicMuller Design Studio
Proofreading: Martina Fryda Kaurimsky
Translation and adaption into English: Ljiljana Culjak
Tisak: Kvikprint, d.o.o., Zagreb