The audience in Zagreb will have an opportunity to view the works from Nikola Pjevačević’s recent cycle titled “Tree Alley” from 4 July to 27 August at the Josip Račić Gallery. It is an exhibition that this young artist received as an award from the expert jury of the National Museum of Modern Art for his powerful large-scale monochromatic polyptych from the cycle “Dusk”, presented as part of the 6th Biennial of Painting held at the HDLU in 2021. The exhibition is conceived by Željko Marciuš, NNMU museum consultant, who is, together with Nikola Pjevačević and Tihana Galić, curator and manager of the Josip Račić Gallery, also the author of the visual set-up. The works selected for the exhibition have been executed in the technique of carved wood and encaustic – a technique known since ancient times.
(...) The artist’s painterly reliefs, as a touch of nature, allude to wood as a structural element of the composition, simplified as cells. Then, they refer to wood or a tree as a plant consisting of roots, trunk, and crown, and finally, as a tree that humans have marked. (...) The Tree Alley becomes a valid metaphor for the impetus-providing exploration preserved in the experience of the cosmos, nature, culture, individual and collective consciousness, spread between – for each person individually – the unity of different universes and the universe of different unities.
Željko Marciuš, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art, excerpt from the text in the exhibition catalogue.
Biography
Nikola Pjevačević (Beli Manastir, 1993) graduated in 2019 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the class of professors Duje Jurić and Matko Vekić.
He has staged five solo exhibitions and participated in twelve juried and invitational group exhibitions, including the 16th and 17th Erste Fragments
(awarded the Grand Prix) and the 6th Biennial of Painting (award for the Best Young Artist and NMMU Award for Solo Exhibition). His work is part of
the collection of drawings and prints from 1945 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Osijek. He currently works as an external associate at the Academy of
Arts and Culture in Osijek. He lives and works in Zagreb.
Solo exhibition
2023
Black silence,
Lađa X
Gallery, ARL Dubrovnik
2022
On common ground
Gallery Kranjčar, Zagreb
Black Silence,
Kazamat
Gallery, HDLU Osijek
2021
Dusk
Salon Galić Gallery,
HULU Split
2020
Stillness,
SC Gallery,
Zagreb
Group exhibition
2022
28th Slavonic Biennial,
New Paradigms of Happiness – from
Osijek’s Dada to Contemporary Chaos,
Museum of Fine Arts, Osijek
Another dimension,
SC Gallery, Zagreb
Cave’s cave, AMZ Gallery, Zagreb
6th Biennale of
Painting, City Museum, Eltz Castle, Vukovar
6th Biennale of Painting,Istrian
Parliament, Poreč
6th Biennale of Painting, City Museum, Art Gallery,
Varaždin, 2021
6th Biennale of Painting, HDLU / HDLU Galleries,
Zagreb
Annual exhibition
of HDLU members (invited author), HDLU Galleries, Zagreb
Erste Fragments 17, Lauba, Zagreb
2020
Ethereal narratives,
Kranjčar Gallery, Zagreb
Erste Fragment 16, Lauba, Zagreb
2019
Towards the Biennial of Painting,
Šira Gallery, Zagreb
Awards
2021
6th Painting Biennale, award for
the best young artist, Zagreb
6th Painting Biennale, NMMU award, Zagreb
Grand prix Purchase of work at Erste
Fragments 17, Grand prix, Zagreb
2020
Purchase of work at Erste Fragments 16,
Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Images: From the Nikola Pjevačević's Tree Alley exhibition display at the Josip Račić Gallery / Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2023.