Domagoj Rogina / Low Tide Time

Solo exhibition

Domagoj Rogina's solo exhibition, which will be held in the Šira Gallery on July 7 at 7 p.m. as part of the cooperation between the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and the Natural History Museum in Zagreb.

Domagoj Rogina's exhibition is the thirteenth in a series of exhibitions dedicated to the academic painter and graphic artist Izabela Šimunović (1970-2010). - in which the AMADEO Scene and the Croatian Museum of Natural History present visual artists whose works are inspired by natural science themes.

FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION

No changes are traumatic to nature. The living world went through five great extinctions, continents merged, separated, sank and rose from the sea, and individuals and entire species died in suffering, without a voice, leaving only traces to paleontologists. But man possesses a sense of fear. The ability to predict. The prospect of change and loss of current comfort frightens and disturbs him. We want to anticipate the tides, the periods of our expansion and contraction (and it is the metaphor of the tide as a suitable political moment that Brutus uses in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar , a character to whom the writer gives the role of an overly ambitious antagonist). That is why one of the symbols dear to modern man is the shark – a dangerous animal that tirelessly sails through the seas and oceans, cutting through them with its elegant shape in search of prey. The Western imperative of constant self-improvement and obsessive grabbing of everything has found its emblem in this monster. After all, as Oswald Spengler says, man is the most predatory beast.

The painter Domagoj Rogina also found himself in the ocean of reality. Like any artist, he has to swim through it, be a proactive predator or an unfortunate prey. However, a sensitive painter does not like to be forced into such a division of roles. His spirit is meditative, and the problems that entertain him (I won't say – torment him – because I feel that he really enjoys his artistic work) are not related to survival and accumulation of resources, but to the enrichment of life, to the expansion of the boundaries of self-knowledge, aesthetic pleasure, a possible sense of fulfillment. Both to himself and to others.

That is why he decided to meet the shark in himself. Even to confront it, if necessary. To show and thus bring to knowledge (both his own and that of the observer of the work) that inherent animal and aggressive power that society only seemingly restrains. In this painter's work, the shark is often reduced to a recognizable motif of the sharp lines of its tail and dorsal fin. Sometimes these are the only parts of this beast that Rogina depicts in the painting, but it is also very much present through them. These are its attributes of fear, used countless times in animated or feature films as indicators of the danger it brings. The director's most famous play with the fear of the shark is certainly the one in Spielberg's film Jaws. The director does not associate the musical theme that suggests the anticipation of his attack, in the first half of the film, with the presence of the shark on the screen. It is an indicator of the atmosphere of fear that spreads through the community of the tourist town. When the shark finally appears, the musical theme is absent. Her appearance in the film is truly unexpected, as is her actual attack, so the fear of the depicted community is very effectively transferred to the viewers.

Rogina, too, often hides his sharks in unexpected places – they peek out of a pool or a bush. They lurk at us from our subconscious. He paints them with energetic impastos, which betrays determination and wildness. Their restraint may be a reflection of Freud's concept of discomfort in culture, which denotes the maladjustment of our animal instincts to the civilized world and which explains all the violence that people do to each other. It is a tragic split of the human psyche, but also of human society, which we could also read from these works. Moral imperatives versus total immorality in society and the pursuit of spirituality versus aggressive ambition in the individual. In the painting The Departure of the Wild Dog , the main motif is surrounded by a dark, impassable thicket, painted in chaotic lines, like a vision of a darkened mind. Rogina's shark pool is also surrounded by wild vegetation, that unbridled and untamed Nature.

Is the message of these paintings hopeless, then? Is this killer from the depths actually the deep nature of man against which there is no victory, and what we call civilization is only its ebb and flow, a time of temporary calm? Nature lives in change, but it is also indescribably callous. That is, it is callous from a human perspective, capable of compassion, and sometimes ready for it. If we manage to harmonize our awareness of ourselves and others with nature, and at the same time tame and even subdue that same nature, not allow it to drag us along with its blind destructiveness, that is, if we manage to swim with sharks, we can see the totality of knowledge. It is a whole of harmony and disorder, a vision of wilderness and gentleness at the same moment. I think that this is exactly what Domagoj Rogina manages to convey in his paintings.

Feđa Gavrilović

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

In each cycle I start, I want to discover something new, make a step forward, learn something through the process, paint bravely, openly, approach painting as a game, discovery, reflection. Sometimes it all resembles a struggle. The way I paint is often ahead of the motif itself in terms of importance. How will I paint something, not what. I focus on brushstrokes, handwriting, the surface of the painting, its tactile part. Paintings often hide symbols from everyday life, my own but also life situations in general. Also, the process of painting is very important to me because I think that from a sketch on paper to a finished painting, a lot changes, reveals, corrects, reacts, learns. I try to combine two opposites in one painting: I want to counteract energy, openness and expressiveness with knowledge, control and sensibility. With a brave approach, I provoke the unexpected, and I react to the unexpected openly, exploratively, figuratively, and slowly bring the painting to an end.

Domagoj Rogina

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR

Domagoj Rogina was born in 1989 in Varaždin. He graduated in painting in the class of Prof. Damir Sokić at the Department of Teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb in 2017. So far, he has exhibited at about thirty group and six solo exhibitions. He was in residence in Belgium in 2015 and at the Počitelj Art Colony (BiH) in 2019. Since 2018, he has been working as a professor of fine arts and technical culture at the Slava Raškaj Center for Education in Zagreb.

Group exhibitions (selection):

2021. 6. Biennial of Painting, HDLU, Zagreb

2020. 35. Youth Salon, HDLU, Zagreb

2019. 5. Biennial of Painting, HDLU, Zagreb

2019. 15. Erste fragments, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

2017. 20. International Exhibition Miniatures, Vršilnica – Novi Dvori, Zaprešić/Belgrade

2017. 4. Biennial of Painting, Croatian Association of Artists, Zagreb

2017. Festival of World Literature, Josip Račić Studio of the Modern Gallery, Zagreb
2017. Materiality in Contemporary Croatian Art, Croatian Association of Artists, Zagreb

2017. 13. Erste Fragments, Kranjčar Gallery, Zagreb

2016 19th International Exhibition Miniatures, Vršilnica – Novi dvori, Zaprešić

2016, 2017 Passion Heritage, Josip Račić Gallery, Zagreb

2015. Zagorje Salon, Krapina City Gallery

2015 Passion Heritage, Kristofor Stanković Gallery, Zagreb

2014. 32. Youth Salon, Croatian Association of Artists, Zagreb

2013, 2014, 2016 Watercolours on Scaffolding, Matija Skurjeni Museum Zaprešić and Samobor Museum

Solo exhibitions:

2020 From the Shadow II, Golden Angel Gallery, Varaždin

2019. From the Shadows, Karas Gallery, Zagreb

2019. Monoliths, SC Gallery, Zagreb

2017. In the Mirror, Greta Gallery, Zagreb

2017. Swimmer, Vladimir Filakovac Gallery, Zagreb

2016. Fragmentology 2/2, Gallery 3.14, Zagreb

The exhibition can be viewed during the working hours of the Gallery (Mon-Fri: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., 6 p.m. – 8 p.m., Saturdays: 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.), until July 22, 2022.