MAJA BACHLER / TERRAFORMING
Solo exhibition
FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION
It is well known that man changes the world in which he finds himself. He changes it with technology – by clearing forests, breaking through mountains, pulling resources from the Earth's bowels, diverting rivers, flooding valleys. Aggressively and ruthlessly, we adapt the world to our needs, to our predatory consciousness. And art is one of its fruits: an attempt to articulate this excess that we call our "I", that specifically human way of being, in which we abstract our needs, our memories and visions. Art and technology are places where man equates himself, at least in his own imagination, with the creator of the universe, projected by all religions.
Did Maja Bachler enter the adventure of abstract painting with such great pretensions, since she called her latest cycle "Terraforming", that is, shaping the conditions on a planet, modeled on those on Earth? Today, we can easily dismiss everything as a stunt, or a marketing trick. As another game of consciousness, which assumes only a sound word to a thoughtful, serious and dark concept. But, I believe that, nevertheless, every attempt to act imaginatively and create a world (even in painting) is serious, like the undertaking of planetary interventions. The artist here presents curves through which rich layers of colors shine, almost shimmering on the gray-white base of the paintings. This is the pathos of her "I", her certainty that she rules painting at its foundations, in its very form. And the form,
to the viewer's psychology and sensibility, he addresses directly.
The titles of the paintings themselves are associated with natural phenomena or elements: Pelagos (sea), Petrichor (the smell that remains after rain), Discordance (the absence of certain time layers in the rocks), Benthos (creatures that live at the bottom of water masses), The High Sun, the Dawn. Another painting, whose title directly alludes to the divine attributes with which the author plays is Abiogenesis, i.e. the creation of living matter from inanimate matter – an artistic and creative act par excellence, which we have been trying to perform in retorts and laboratories for centuries. And art tries to do that, at least metaphorically. In painting, for example, color is life bursting from dead matter, germinating in the mind of the recipient of the painting.
However, even this pathetic of creation, which is invoked in the titles, does not take itself so seriously. In these paintings, there are no penetrating gestures that strive to be larger than a human hand. Namely, knowing her previous oeuvre, there is always some ambiguous wink in Maja Bachler's work. And here I see her self-awareness: her approach to the pompous rhetoric of Art and Creation as a cheerful farce, and the role of the Goddess, which she has now taken on, as a carnival costume. And it is precisely with such a non-committal understanding of ourselves and the world that we can truly get to know all the different mythological thunderers, whatever people call them. Although artistic creation, as I have already hinted, is serious work, we will only do it fully if we approach it with extreme frivolity. Well, Nature itself is frivolous. Otherwise, she wouldn't allow people to get so loose and constantly shape her so ruthlessly, in her own image.
Feđa Gavrilović
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maja Bachler was born in 1983 in Zagreb. She graduated in Sociology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Fine Arts at the Department of Teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, majoring in painting. She received her master's degree in fine arts education in 2017. During her studies, she spent one semester at the University of Ulster in the United Kingdom.
She has exhibited solo and in groups and highlights the following exhibitions: 32. Youth Salon, Croatian Association of Artists; Solo exhibition "Constructs", Greta Gallery, 2014; Solo exhibition "Furious", Zagreb City Libraries, 2015; Erste Fragments, Kranjčar Gallery, 2015; Triennial of Croatian Sculpture, Glyptotheque, 2015; Contemporary Echoes of Antiquity, Glyptotheque, 2016; Solo exhibition "Zeitraum", Lauba, 2018; 5th Triennial of Drawings, Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, 2018; Selected solution for the poster on the building – Competition of CROZ and HDLU, 2018; Youth Salon, HDLU, 2018; Solo exhibition "Volare", Greta Gallery, 2019; 5th Biennial of Painting, HDLU, 2019; 8th Triennial of Graphics, Glyptotheque, 2019; Solo exhibition "Halyeutica", Stara skula Gallery, Mljet, 2020; Solo exhibition "La Folie", Forum Gallery, Zagreb 2022
The exhibition at the Šira Gallery can be viewed during the Gallery's working hours (Mon-Fri: 9-16 h, 18-20 h, Saturdays: 11-16 h) until 23/10/2025.
The exhibition was realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb.