Kinema Sarajevo

Gallery of Contemporary Art (Celje, Slovenia)
June 21  – July 15, 2000

“Kinema Sarajevo”- group exhibition

The title “Kinema Sarajevo” contains the two fundamental determinants of this exhibition: cinema—film as a medium that artists use as a starting point in their works; and Sarajevo—the place to which all three are emotionally attached in some way (Danica Dakić and Maja Bajević come from Sarajevo and Slaven Tolj, from Dubrovnik, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo).

“Kinema Sarajevo” is one in a series of those thematic exhibitions that examine the relationship and set up a dialog between different art narratives, or those that use film as a reference point for global metaphor. The connection between these two media—their interaction, the influence of one medium on another—has persisted practically since the appearance of film, which has been and is still being dealt with by theory and criticism. This exhibition is one more material contribution to this theme.

The works presented in this exhibition were conceived and realized at different times, independent from one another. They appear together for the first time in Celje. What differentiates “Kinema Sarajevo” from other, for the most part curated, exhibitions that present artists/works connected into a thematic whole is the fact that this exhibition was initiated by the authors themselves.

The concept for the exhibition is based on the complementary nature of the three artistic positions and approaches. Danica Dakić, with the installation “Who is the Author,” documents a work in progress which began with fragments of motion-picture film found by chance. Translating one medium into another—fragments of film into large-dimension photographs—she adapts the found material for gallery presentation. Thus, she creates a new “narrative,” in the center of which is the question of authorship. In the installation “Bergman, Bond, Bajević,” Maja Bajević, through the process of deconstruction, separates the basic elements of film—moving image and sound—and sets them in opposition. Slaven Tolj, in “Kino Jadran,” moves one functional whole—a screening room, a film projector and the projection of clear (“empty”) film onto a wall—into a gallery, a functionally different space. With the change in spatial context and the reduction of the contents to their basic elements, the artist strips film, as a whole, of its basic function.

Curator: Dunja Blažević

Participating artists: Danica Dakić, Maja Bajević and Slaven Tolj