ZARK

“Atemporal – Timeless canvases“

“Atemporal – Timeless canvases” opened at the Kavana Lav gallery in Gornji grad, Zagreb on Saturday, March 30, 2019. A neighborhood festival of fine art, sustainable fashion, handcrafted jewellery, music, and modern Croatian cuisine, it took place at one of the oldest and most beautiful locations in Zagreb – Kamenita Vrata.

At the exhibition, which began with a solo performance by Zagreb Philharmonic contrabassist Borna Dejanović, visitors could enjoy new paintings by the American-Croatian artist Johnathan A. Roberts, a fashion review of the spring collection of Dora Rubić from DORA modni salon, which was inspired by Johnathan’s canvases, all complemented by unique jewellery from the Lapidarium gallery. After the opening, the paintings were on display for the next four weeks in the Kavana Lav gallery, the DORA modni salon, and Trilogija restaurant. The project was sponsored by Blue Marble Translations, Lapidarium, and Trilogia.

“Atemporal” Artists’ Statement

Global interconnection treats us to a suffocating daily avalanche of international culture, and with it an implicit pressure to constantly update our concepts of style and fashion. Last year alone, the garment industry produced 100 billion articles of clothing for the 7 billion inhabitants of our planet – enough to keep all of our backs covered for years to come. Most of it was destined to be worn only a few times before being “donated” to a waste bin. Billions of euros worth of yesterday’s fashion are burned every year without ever having been sold. In a similar vein, the landfills of the western world are overflowing with mass produced artworks created on factory assembly lines, designed to be purchased on a whim and later cast aside without a twinge of remorse. What a cultural and ecological catastrophe!

We are adrift on a sea of single-use consumer items and triviality, lost without any harbor or permanent anchorage to be found. Under the circumstances, the urge to reject planned obsolescence and instead hand craft timeless and resonantly beautiful clothing, jewelry and artworks can be interpreted as a survival mechanism – a very human impulse to bring a sense of meaning, stability and order to our world.

Perhaps the best way to find our bearings is to draw on those parts of the past which are most enduring and valuable, then assimilate them into ourselves and refashion them (with the benefit of modern technology!) to suit our present needs. At the same time, we can cast a line to future generations by accepting the natural world and ancient mythology as the sturdiest sources of inspiration, to ensure our creations will be recognizable as sublime for as far off as our imagination will take us.

The abstract features of the paintings and graphics on display, and the textile designs used in DORA’s collection of bespoke attire that is based on the paintings, are inspired by the fundamental algorithms that describe the formation of crystals and organic chemical structures. Their more easily recognizable figurative elements focus on natural settings bursting with symbols of love, fertility and acceptance, with thematic references to Sumerian, Greek and Etruscan mythology.

These are complemented by handcrafted jewelry from Lapidarium that is made from bronze, gold and precious stones, which also take their design inspiration from nature, as well as coral and pearls harvested from the Adriatic Sea.

In the spirit of timelessness which we want to invoke, the best location we could imagine for this exhibition is directly beside Zagreb’s oldest standing structure, Kamenita vrata, which has endured for nearly 800 years. Having put forth the effort to create art that can be passed down to future generations, we dare not hope that it could last for centuries – but each of us is convinced that this is certainly a worthwhile aspiration.