Ivana Tkalčić: Unread Books

The aura that emanates from works of art is often called sacred. These works often seem untouchable and unattainable, while their creation remains mysterious. That is why a large number of contemporary artists try to break down this wall between the artist and the observer. Ivana Tkalčić explores this relationship with her artistic work, using words that will be read by the viewer. In this way, she establishes close contact with the audience, ... Read More

The aura that emanates from works of art is often called sacred. These works often seem untouchable and unattainable, while their creation remains mysterious. That is why a large number of contemporary artists try to break down this wall between the artist and the observer. Ivana Tkalčić explores this relationship with her artistic work, using words that will be read by the viewer. In this way, she establishes close contact with the audience, who literally "read" her works.
Therefore, in her work, she uses books, property with which she had no contact. Works for which Ivana has no feelings and with which she has not established a relationship, in whose existence she is not involved. In an almost ritual process, she transforms books into works of fine art. The course of creation has precisely defined phases of activity that are repeated in the same procedures with each work of art. The artist tears pages from books, tears them out and thus deconstructs their meaning of the civilizational concept, as well as their content and context. She creates a collage, or painting, using a non-traditional method – her own invention of the same. Fragments of books become an amorphous mass that mixes with rhythmic movements. Then, by spreading the mass on a sieve made of her other works of art, she awaits the end result, which is obtained by long-term drying of the mass. However, the precisely given elements do not change the substance, i.e. the paper. It transforms and in the process changes meanings, content and form. The form, whose content is the words, becomes the content, whose form is the words.
Only with the presentation of the transformed work is it completed. Ivana's works offer arbitrary content that is not affirmed through the intention of the artist, but through the participation of the observer. U
In relation to the work of art and the viewer, the work is completed, each time gaining a new meaning and new content. The work is an image from a text, a text from an image. There is a transcendence of the boundaries of image and word, where their roles change bidirectionally, intermediately. Verbal signs are transformed into pictorial signs, while the image itself is literally "read". Each read word is isolated from its context, from its meaning, and thus subject to the change of its original function into emotional, connotative, aesthetic. Each observer has a subjective experience of the words that spring from the works, and thus assigns them their own meaning, their own context. The function of words in the book as a transmitter of knowledge is lost with the loss of context. Words float in a vacuum into which they were brought by the author's will, almost by rebellion, to deprive words used and interpreted out of context of their sentence form, so that the word becomes pure and free.
Contrary to the established and traditional, the function of the form itself is maintained through its content. The work is artistic precisely because it is cathartic for the viewer. Self-reflection is inevitable every time the work is observed. The gaze acts in a different way each time and almost esoterically affects the self-actualization of the observer. The works only direct and raise awareness. Through free associations, the observer unconsciously chooses words for interpretation, words that are actually already in him. They are selected and processed anew, creating a new creation – artistic and semantic.
Ivana Tkalčić's works explore Otherness, which focuses on the meanings that the Other, the observers, attach to the works, and not those that come from the artist herself while creating them. Her work is an exploration of the whole of the subjective and the objective, which, according to the philosopher Fichte, is realized through interaction between people. She does not create new realities, but recycles existing elements of culture in order to create a model of action in the existing reality. For her, art is a state of encounter through which her work is completed.

Maja Flaissig

BIOGRAPHY

Ivana Tkalčić graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Zagreb in 2016 in the class of art. prof. K. Turčić. She received her master's degree from the Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb with the topic - cultural tourism. In the academic year 2014/2015, she received an ERASMUS+ scholarship, which enabled her to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She is the winner of the Rector's Award of the University of Zagreb for independent work of art, state and county scholarships, the Golden Index student award and the prestigious Austrian Red Carpet Art Award. She has participated in numerous art workshops such as: BAUHAUS workshops in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Performance and Dance, and Paper and Recycled Material at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She has had two solo exhibitions in Varaždin and Zabok, and has exhibited in many group exhibitions, of which the following stand out: Young European Art, Juraj Šporer Art Pavilion, Opatija; Erste Fragments 12, Kranjčar Gallery, Zagreb; BAUNET Project, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Student Cultural Centre Novi Sad, Novi Sad; ORIS House of Architecture, Zagreb; International Exhibition of Miniatures, Zagreb; Novi Sad; Belgrade. She is currently preparing for art residencies in Greece and Belgium.

Contact: ivanatkalcic@gmail.com