Dorian Pacak / Fat boy

Solo exhibition

FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION

"Weekend. It was always easier to get up on weekends than on weekdays when you had to go to school. Quick brushing and brushing your teeth. Running out of the house with uneaten toast in your mouth and untied shoelaces, while in the background your mother's voice warns "Tie your shoelaces, you'll fall!". Going to the market, the location is known to every kid as well as to you – every city had that one shop or that one stall in/where children's eyes sparkled the most: fried pirated games on CDs for PlayStation and PC, fake Yu-gi-oh! cards, plastic guns, a bunch of animals and their hybrids in flashy shades that do not belong to natural reality. Colorful icicles for a marten, and sometimes for only half a nightingale, while you could take home a real treasure with a honey. It is a childhood that all of us who grew up in the years of transition from the last to the current millennium know firsthand.

Currently, the most interesting achievements of the young author Dorian Pacak are inspired by this aesthetics of saturated kitsch, intensely colored plastic dinosaurs and fast cars within video games. Through the traditional study of portraits and the process of making a sculpture, and in the desire to master the form, Pacak returns to the beginning, to the tradition of himself that he began to build in his most sensitive period of life. In addition to the expected artistic elements such as mass, form and the material from which the sculpture is made, Pacak puts emphasis on color in these works. Knowing the work of the author, this is not surprising, given his passion for painting in the earlier days of the Academy and his experimental approach to color. The goal of the Fat Boy sculptural cycle, which this young author hints at in his earlier works, is to present interesting and cheerful works that will be accessible to the audience and whose flashy color palette will stimulate the brain of the observer and encourage him to fantasize.

Pacak's sculptures carry a dose of humour, but we must by no means judge them immature, because under the first layer of laughter and childlike playfulness, the author presents his own existential rumours: "Wit and humor are the expressions I would use to describe the impression I want these works to leave on the observer. To look at the problems and inconveniences we deal with every day and laugh along the way is a power that can give the observer a sense of control over the whole situation."

Buga Kranželić

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR

Dorian Pacak was born on 5.5.1996 in Zagreb, graduated in 2015 from the V. Gymnasium in Zagreb, and in 2017 he enrolled in the Teaching Department at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Zagreb, where he is currently in the 2nd year of graduate studies, majoring in sculpture in the class of Ivan Fijolić. He has exhibited at three solo exhibitions (Crta Gallery, Lauba (Pass It On), Polica Gallery) and several group exhibitions (Šira Gallery, Karas Gallery, Pallas Projects/Studios Gallery, Canvas Gallery, Bačva Gallery, SC Gallery, etc.) and projects (Art in the Community: Redefining the Heritage of the 'Earth' Group, several actions of painting children's playgrounds in cooperation with the Maksimir Center for Culture and Information and Dry Stone Walls: A Trace in the Landscape or Forgotten Cultural Heritage). He lives and works in Zagreb.

The exhibition was realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Media and the City Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb.

You can see the exhibition in the Šira Gallery during the working hours of the Gallery (Mon-Fri: 9-16 h, 18-20 h, Saturday: 11-16 h) until 24.6.2023.