Zeljko Kipke: FIFTH RETROFUTURISTIC EXHIBITION: 4 FILMS

Željko Kipke
FIFTH RETROFUTURISTIC EXHIBITION: 4 FILMS

The First Retrofuturistic Exhibition was devoted to Stanley Kubrick and it was held in Rijeka (Grad Gallery, 2001). The second one was set up in Ljubljana to the topic of space escapism and UFOs (Bežigrad Gallery, 2005). The third one was a witty comment on the new colonial regime in Zagreb after Croatia’s joining the EU (Ulrich Gallery, 2011). The fourth was also held in Zagreb under the title Unyielding Look into the Future, in which Hollywood actors from the 50s promoted non-commercial Croatian film production (SC Gallery, 2014). Late film stars promoted little-known films produced in the new millennium. The fifth exhibition in Maribor, at MMC KIBLA, is devoted to the film medium and the return to the future. It focuses on films with interrupted timeline that mostly went in reverse direction.

All previous Retrofuturistic Exhibitions had a common goal – a voyage to the past that contains fragments of man’s future, no matter if this is the “social skin” from the beginning of the sixties that reflects political and social patterns of today (Social Skin 60-62, 2012) or the already mentioned media experiment Unyielding Look into the Future (2013) in which John Wayne, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim and other stars promote films like Black Blacker than Black (1985–2003) and Surveillance Camera (2011). The first document is about a mystically toned action performed on a Zagreb square on the Easter of 1985. The other is a documentary story about surveillance, spy movies, police actions and the construction of the headquarters building of intelligence services in Zagreb. The film has a diary form and it is a specific (Croatian) example of the well-known Orwell’s 1984 syndrome.

At the exhibition, the ten-minute film action about the unyielding future is accompanied by paintings functioning as a film scenario. They reflect individual frames from the film Unyielding Look into the Future. The Fifth Retrofuturistic Exhibition is an abridged retrospective of the author’s attempts to disrupt (or confuse) the universally accepted pattern of time.

ŽELJKO KIPKE (Čakovec, 1953) – painter, writer, filmmaker, graduated from the Painting Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1971–1976). He attended the Painting Master Workshop in Zagreb (1976–1981). At the beginning, he focused on primary and analytical painting, but from 1982 he introduced expressiveness to his canvases. He was a member of Radna zajednica umjetnika (Working Community of Artists), an informal group of artists gathered around the Podroom Gallery and the Extended Media Gallery (1978–1981). In the first half of the eighties he made short films, mostly documenting his public actions. He participated in a group exhibition at New York’s Artists Space in 1989. During an art residency in Marseilles in 1991 he created a solo exhibition. He represented Croatia at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and at the Cairo Biennale two years later. He writes essays and critiques on experimental film and art practice for daily papers and periodicals, and has been a full member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) since 1997. He participated at Szeemann's authorial exhibition Blood & Honey / Future Is in the Balkans in Klosterneuburg (Vienna) 2003 and was appointed Commissioner of the Croatian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007. Recently he has been making short film narratives based on coincidences and dreams (Invisible Sculpture, 2006; Niner Stretch, 2007; Small Cat and a Lion, 2008; Invisible Galleries, 2009; Surveillance Camera, 2011; Unyielding Look into the Future, 2013). Nine of his books have been published – ranging from selected theory-related writings, essays on contemporary art, and short stories to a one-year diary (February to February, Zagreb 2005), a catalogue of dreams (Sei-khai-reich, Velika Gorica 2006), and a book of coincidences (Figure 17 – Heaven Can Wait, Zagreb 2007). He lives in Zagreb.

About the exhibition

Co-production
Združenje za umetnost in avdio-vizualno produkcijo KODA MODRO
in KID KIBLA, Maribor.

Odpiralni čas: pon–pet: 9.00–22.00; sob: 16.00–22.00.
Na ogled do 28. 11. 2015.