Marko Tadić’s exhibition, as part of the Kožarić Studio - Reviving Lab Cycle, is also part of the Triggers Cycle, in which artists, activists, communities or associations, each in their own way, interpret museum collections.
The links between Marko Tadić and Ivan Kožarić are profound. Tadić, just like Kožarić, perceives his own work as a large abstract archive that speaks of itself mainly through the whole. Furthermore, he also underlines other components of Kožarić’s approach that meant a lot to him as an artist, namely, the overlapping of living and exhibition spaces, and treating the entire spectrum of material objects as art tools. Still, the deepest connection between them as artists is the constant urge to explore the world around them through play.
For the ambience created here, Tadić uses various artefacts from Kožarić's studio as his main working materials: found photographs drawn from Kožarić’s vast archive, but also his own collages created from waste working materials in processes similar to those used, for example, for Kožarić's Spontaneous Sculptures. He freely combines all this in an imaginary living space that he creates by replacing classic museum pedestals with found used furniture in order to encourage, just as Kožarić did, the formation and existence of new, different constellations that arise when fixed boundaries between different worlds begin to become irrelevant.
Although Kožarić was known as a good cook and in one of his projects even appropriated kitchen furniture as his own work, here there is no kitchen in the literal sense. The exhibition’s name is in fact a metaphor for the state in which found objects are completed by reworking, reworking an experience. In a world that both the artists looked on as a field of open potentials or, as interpreted by Tadić, as constant visual poetry, the main actor has now become Ivan Kožarić himself.
Marko Tadić (Sisak, 1979) graduated in painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence in 2006. His art focuses on drawing, collage, installations and stop-motion animation. He has exhibited at numerous solo and group exhibitions and at film festivals in Croatia and abroad (Zagreb, Ljubljana, Vienna, Kassel, Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Venice). In 2017 he represented Croatia at the 57th Venice Biennale alongside Tina Gverović, and in that year he also exhibited at the 1st Anren Biennale in China. In 2018 he participated in the 2nd Industrial Art Biennale in Labin and Raša. He is the recipient of a number of awards: in 2015 the Vladimir Nazor Award for best exhibition of the year, in 2010 the third T-HTnagrada@MSU Award of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, and in 2008 the Radoslav Putar Award for best young artist of the year.
Since 2015 he has been guest lecturer at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti) in Milan. Since 2020 he has been assistant professor at the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.
Author of the exhibition concept: Marko Tadić
Exhibition curator: Radmila Iva Janković
The exhibition and catalogue have been made possible with support from the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
MARKO TADIĆ: THE KITCHEN
12 September – 10 November 2024
