Zlatan Vehabovid, Sweeping Confetti From the Floor of the Concrete Hole, 06/10/2011 - 16/11/2011

Photo N1. Sweeping Confetti from the Floor of the Concrete Hole, Joy Division

Zlatan Vehabovid's paintings are ambitious. Ambitious, neither in the sense of performance as a manual undertaking, nor some pretentious symbolic imagery or complex concept. They are ambitious in the amount of energy, systematic planning and blind trust put into the mediation of certain ideas, personal experiences, memories, emotions and images that elude the universal encoding, in the spheres of image and text equally. That specific approach to mediation is maybe, in experiential sense, closest to the concept of evocation; evocation without interpretation. For Vehabovid, paintings obviously have that magical ability, at least one step more mystical than narration. In that sense it is indicative how this author monopolizes the interpretation of his own works, continuously and chronologically publishing texts on each painting on his blog (weakersoldier.blogpot.com). In these reference texts he provides a clear emotional, cultural and literary context for each painting, not leaving much to chance and mystification.

Photo N2. Sweeping Confetti from the Floor of the Concrete Hole, Master and Everyone

Photo N3. Sweeping Confetti from the Floor of the Concrete Hole, Joy Division, White Buffalo

Lovro Artukovid, Preview of New Paintings, 03/11/2011 - 16/11/2011

There is obviously a certain irony in the two versions of the scene Models Posing for Piet, visible even without reading the blatantly revealing title. But it is not the sort of irony that would be malicious towards the iconographic theme the paintings refer to. This work by Artukovid shoves the obvious in the viewers face from the tradition of Western art, a deeply rooted motif of the Lamentation of Christ but at the same time it impertinently distances itself from its own status of interpretation, i.e., exploitation. Something else, also obvious, comes forward; the gaze of the models, which shows a completely human uneasiness and momentary impossibility to relate with the role they should be playing. The relationship of Artukovids Piet with the motif it recycles is completely ambivalent, but still, it is not without a psychological effect. Even the unrealized Piet inevitably retains its conventional meaning we have adopted, while in these canvases we are faced with a low-key and out-of-character version of it. To revive the famous scene, the painter uses the blustering naivet and immediacy and sticks to them until the end. Instead of the authority of a religious scene or appropriated importance of references from art history, we are faced with an impenetrable presence of two protagonists on a vulnerable line between exposed intimacy and depersonalized symbolism.

Photo N4. Models posing for Pieta

Photo N5. Pieta Inverted

Kristina Lenard, Site-specific Installation Think space, 15/11/2011 15/02/2012

Within the Think Space Project by the Zagreb Architects Society Kristina Lenard has, for the first time, made a site-specific installation in Lauba; a work that the audience is able to see in its original form on the spot and not in the form specific for the artist as a photograph in a lightbox. The installation in Lauba simultaneously offers a view of the framed scene in the black mirror as an analogy to the photographic image and its reference in real life. Here are carefully arranged home plants and moss that should simulate a real landscape with their reflection. Initial, perhaps less brave version of the work, limited the frame in concept, in a way that the viewer had no opportunity to see the constructed arrangement, only its reflection. In the process of realization of the work, which is still going on as I write, is the key practical question here how to establish a visually clear hierarchy between the two? The question is, however, more complex than that, and it is not only a practical one, because which would actually be the first and which the second of two seemingly juxtaposed scenes? Kristina Lenards current work is about the constant transgression: transgression of the genre from still life to landscape and back, transgression of proportions from real to fictional and back, and even transgression of hierarchy itself between tangible reality and its image.

Photo N6. Exhibition and Site-specific Installation by Kristina Lenard Beyond Borders

Photo N7. Exhibition and Site-specific Installation by Kristina Lenard Beyond Borders

Bruno Poganik, Site-specific Installation The Magic is gone (But the Filth is still there), 01/12/2011 07/02/2012
Bruno Poganik has always created art outside the traditional concept of the media. For years, the public followed him primarily through his work as a street artist. He has been working on the streets of various European and American cities and mostly, of course, in his hometown Zagreb. He was recognized under various pseudonyms and tags; in his ten years long career the two most famous ones were certainly Filjio and Puma 34. Some might be sad to see this king of street art leave the streets, wondering whether he had sold out to galleries and why is he exhibiting works that were not created exclusively for the street and that is, of course, a completely wrong view of his work. However, what remains constant about Bruno Poganiks work is that he is an artist who constantly transforms himself and finds new ways of making art, in accordance with time and space he lives in. He is still dealing with communication with his audience the audience that has been significantly big so far, which he always provided with the most various inputs. There are still the protagonists of his personal world of Luddism: creatures with eyes, ears, legs, expressions, gesturesHybrid organisms in the world of DIY machines which seemingly do not offer any logical relations or information. The observer is the only one who can give them some kind of meaning and the audience has to learn to read and communicate: for some, these are piles of junk, for others they are the tools for saving the world. It is thus no coincidence that the artist does not limit himself in terms of materials and information; he devours them from every source available, while its still not too late. Those are the images of our time in vibration, as well as in consumption they offer. This is a new and quality manufacturing process in which the artist is the collector of information, and real production and interpretation happen only in the exchange of meaning with the observer (or listener).

Photo N8. The Magic is gone (But the Filth is still ther

Photo N9. The Magic is gone (But the Filth is still there)

Photo N10. The Magic is gone (But the Filth is still there)

Ivana Franke, Waking Background, 10/02/2012 14/03/2012

The opening of Ivana Frankes exhibition Waking Background will take place on 14 February 2012 at Lauba. The exhibition features the installation Seeing with Eyes Closed (realized within the interdisciplinary project Seeing with Eyes Closed, in collaboration with neuroscientist Ida Momennejad and The Association of Neuroesthetics, Berlin), as well as the series of prints Waking Background. A presentation of the artist book Distant Feeling will take place at Prozori Gallery, which will later be exhibited at Lauba.

Photo N10. Waking background 10/02/2012 14/03/2012

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS: Marko Tadid, Second World, March 2012

Referring to two sci-fi classics, The Invention of Morel by Adolf Bioy Casares and From Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, which both mention the discovery of a previously unidentified planet, We Used To Call It: Moon! (2011) by Marko Tadid produces imaginary, fictitious worlds, in order to look at the possibilities of re-examining the perception and imagery of both the past and the future. Intervening in obsolete and used everyday materials, such as private notebooks or old postcards, Tadid explores the visual possibilities of the discovery of a second moon; how it might have been recorded and passed to collective magination. He creates an archive of diverse scenes of known and anonymous tourist destinations, sentimental motifs and kitsch illustrations in which the image of the second moon is inserted discreetly, but obsessively. Oscillating between fiction and documentary, the set-up of the work recalls the wunderkammer atmosphere, opening a door to a parallel reality where the second moon serves as a catalyst that transforms the familiar into another locus composed of fragments of a possible world.

Photo N11. Untitled

Photo N12. Untitled

Photo N13. Untitled

Ivan Fijolid, Neo N.O.B. (Neo Narodna Oslobodilaka Borba Neo National Liberation Struggle), 01/05/2012-12/01/2013
This is a multi regional interdisciplinary project looking at how the countries of former Yugoslavia remember their socialist past through the arts. The project will consist of different activities in each of the participating locations which are: Lauba House for People and Art Rijeka Museum of Modern and Contemporary art Ljubljana Modern Gallery Belgrade Museum of Yugoslav history Skopje Museum of Modern and Contemporary art Each location will host an exhibition of 5 monumental new sculptures by Croatian artist Ivan Fijolid, created for the Neo N.O.B. project. Also to be included in the interdiscplinary project are: a theatre production in Belgrade, a dance production in Skopje, a parallel exhibition of socialist art in Ljubljana and A literary conference in Ljubljana.

Photo N14. Work in progress

Matko Vekid, Common People/Internal Events, September 2012

In the month of April 2012 Lauba will represent the new cycle of paintings of the author, started a year ago.

Photo N15. Untitled

Photo N16. Untitled

Photo N17. Untitled