Ružica Dobranić: Why don't you dance?

The exhibition of Ružica Dobranić was created after a short break, as a kind of continuation of her graduation work. At the end of her education, the artist made an "Inventory" (as she called her graduation thesis) of her own cognitions of fears, questions, impressions, creating an associative and rich environment, an entrance to the processes of symbolization, referential fields, clusters of external impressions. Now, a few years later, she uses the same principle, exposes her own subconscious, puts hints, impressions, associations in front of the observer, speaks ... Read More

Ružica Dobranić's exhibition was created after a short break, as a kind of continuation of her graduation work. At the end of her studies, the artist made an "Inventory" (as she called her graduation thesis) of her own cognitions of fears, questions, impressions, creating an associative and rich ambience, an entrance to the processes of symbolization, referential fields, clusters of external impressions.

Now, a few years later, he uses the same principle, exposes his own subconscious, puts hints, impressions, associations in front of the observer, speaks with rich textures that reflect the layers of the hidden, the forgotten, never formed in consciousness, dim lighting, room lamps, mental maps and chaotic associations, between the attractive and the repulsive. While Inventura was marked by accumulations of impressions about what was learned, experienced, but also by questions about the way of existence and life in art after graduation, this ambience represents an interspace, a split between the everyday, working, systematic and pragmatic and the impulse to create, enter the space of the subconscious, one's own labyrinths, riddles and travels. The doubts, questions, anxieties that were manifested in the Inventory have now passed through the dimension of time, new habits and systems, the deposition of new impressions, questions, possibilities and anxieties, and with them the inner interspace that the artist decides to exhibit has grown in parallel. Arriving, in the window of the gallery, the observer is greeted by objects dimly lit by room lamps. We observe them from a distance, separated by a glass membrane, while those from the shop window invite us to complete the experience, giving only a hint of the possibility of what follows.
In the first room, we see a model, a mental map, a more or less arranged construct of memory, doubts, questions, intentions, desires, literary and personal references. We look from a bird's eye view, above that somewhat inarticulate accumulation of textures, colors and lighting. We observe the entire painting, the artist's metal map on display, with unclear structures, occasional darkenings, incomprehensible impressions. The texture draws the observer, like a voyeuristic gaze into intimacy, mental space, and with it the observer senses what is to come. As a signpost... The symbols remain incomplete, hidden, we do not know what they are hiding, the artist simply exposes them and leaves them to our imagination, an intimate (re)creation of our own mental space.

We enter the second room directly, we are in the center of events. Again dimly lit, piled up and mysterious. Full of parts that tell stories. Like a bedroom from a story by Raymond Carver that the protagonist takes out into the courtyard, exposing to passers-by his own intimacy that he rejects and expels from his own habitat. "Will you dance?" asks the young couple who, by buying, inherit his past, turning it into their own future. Similarly, the artist brings a multitude of works to the gallery with which she creates a reconstruction of the studio or her own interior space and exposes them to the visitors, presenting her own intimacy, mental space, doubts, cleavages, conflicts and associations, positioning the observer inside, in the very center of pulsation and inviting them to their own inventory. On the spot, in the gallery space, she constructs a refuge in order to move away from the routine and everyday life. With this, the observer ceases to be just an observer, he is deprived of the luxury of distance and becomes part of the situation itself, and each of his reactions builds a new dynamic and changes the atmosphere. The gallery space becomes a psychological space, a mental map that the artist puts in front of the viewer, and he continues to build and decompose it with his own associations.

Josipa Bubaš

BIOGRAPHY

Ružica Dobranić was born in 1989 in Zagreb. She graduated from the School of Applied Arts and Design, and in 2013 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Zagreb, in the class of Assoc. Prof. Prof. Art. Mirjana Vodopija.
So far, she has had two solo exhibitions, at the VN Gallery, Zagreb, and at the European Institute for the Culture of Behavior, Zagreb. During her studies, she participates in colonies and workshops. She actively exhibits at group exhibitions in the country, of which the following stand out: All the Art that's Fit to Show, SC Gallery, Zagreb; Sketchbook, SC Gallery, Zagreb; Venientes III, Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, Zagreb; and Gathering, VN Gallery, Zagreb.
Abroad, she participated in the International Biennale of Student Drawing, Sofia, Bulgaria and in the Ostrale 012 project; Homegrown, Dresden, Germany.
She is also active in the field of applied arts (illustration, design, scenography).

Contact: ruzica.dobranic@gmail.com