Art&The City: Every Picture Tells A Story

Art&The City
Every Picture Tells A Story
15–21 September 2022
Zagreb, Croatia

The 2nd edition of the urban intervention project Art&The City in Zagreb, Croatia, invited Slovenian artists Marko Jakše, Rok Predin, and Peter Tomaž Dobrila to showcase their artworks to the wider public on big billboards at several locations around the city, which are on display between 15 and 21 September 2022. Parallelly 510 works of 128 artists are exibited in poster format in Lauba – House for Art and People between 17 and 20 September (between 2 and 9 p.m.).

In the 1st edition of Art&The City only Croatian artists were invited to show their work in advertising spaces of Zagreb. An unexpectedly good response from the artists and the citizens encouraged the organisers to take up even more of the city’s space and present even more artists in 2022. This year three Slovenian artists are included – Marko Jakše with 6 works (Učiteljica, Step by Step, La Rabbia, Maister lampe, Brezglavi skušnjavec devic, Samčki), Rok Predin with 4 works (Ciklus Prestopno leto: Pomlad – Trije kralji, Poletje – Kurent, Jesen – Živi pesek, Zima – Zvezda) and Peter Tomaž Dobrila with 2 works (Vznebovzetje: Ognjenordeča morska zvezda (Echinaster sepositus) – zgoraj, spodaj).

Art&The City 2.0 is simply an attempt to draw attention to art as the ultimate space of freedom, and to change, even for a short while, the views of Zagreb, to activate the urban pulse of the city in an entirely different way. The basic strategy of the intervention Art&The City is establishing a discontinuity between that which we normally expect while commuting to work, school or a night out on one hand, and that which is able to quite suddenly get our attention with a funny idea, a well-shot photograph or art intervention on the other.

This year’s edition of the urban intervention Art&The City’s central theme is Every Picture Tells A Story. Classical and modern art history has taught us that every image tells a certain story, regardless of whether it deals with real textual templates, the artist’s creative imagination or a contemporary observer with the permission to see in the image whatever they like. Public space has been conquered to fill it with art.

Institutions have been abandoned, museums and galleries bypassed, the usual cultural system has been surpassed, the streets have been taken for artworks encouraging intelligence and creativity – all of that makes the foundation of artistic expression. Although attempts to equate art and life that we are familiar with from the New Art Practice and Situationist International, have failed because by equating art and life, we lose either art or life, Art & The City connects art and life by strengthening the autonomy of art and the uniqueness of life.

More: https://www.lauba.hr/artgrad-je-na-ulicima/, https://artigrad.eu/