FRAGMENTS OF LOST TIME
Ivan Hrkaš
National Gallery of BiH, September 1 – October 1, 2022
*** September 15, 7 p.m. – Special exhibition tour led by author, Ivan Hrkaš
*** September 20, 7 p.m. – Artist talk with author, Ivan Hrkaš, and exhibition curator, Ivana Udovičić
“At the current exhibition Fragments of Lost Time, Ivan takes a new step forward and, in addition to 48 author’s photographs, exhibits 28 works from the archive of the National Gallery of BiH whose authors are from the (post)Yugoslav area, with the idea to create a unique or close relationship through the theme-motive as it is not only the beach but also its corresponding and associative situations, conceives the exhibition as a space of dialogic relationships of historical and contemporary views. Works from different time periods are thus placed in a network of relationships, connections and confrontations of poetics, media, expressions, social, cultural, historical, political contexts and contents, implied in the themes that the artists have been pursuing, or more precisely through the motif and iconographic repertoire that they (in)directly explore in artistic and meaningful terms. The exhibited works represent a wide spectrum of approaches to the phenomenon, from classical ones, which remain within the framework of genre-defined formal and representational characteristics, to more unconventional procedures in which the authors use motive premises as a special aspect in the articulation and elaboration of certain concepts. Scenes of coasts, beaches, coastal exteriors, scenes of the daily life of fishermen and bathers can be followed in a variety of interpretations: as an introspective act, a manifest social statement, an allusive speech, a questioning of the internal laws of art media, to a specific storytelling method about the fragility of human existence. Hrkas’s conceptual approach to the presentation of correlating works from the archive of the National Gallery of BiH with his own work establishes the exhibition space as a zone between reality and non-place, sensitized and choreographed for the observer not to be experienced evolutionarily through time and geography, but rather through sensations, feelings and the inevitable social dimension.”
Miroslav Karić, art historian
“This concept brings refreshment to the art scene, but it is not surprising because Ivan Hrkas is not an ordinary photographer. His moments of the present are almost always interwoven with thin threads of the not-so-long-ago past, which is sometimes and in some places only shown in archival documents, rare chronicles and travelogues, simultaneously disappearing from the memory of the survivors, until the survivors themselves disappear. And then comes the oblivion. That’s how it usually happens since the beginning of time. Epochs disappear to give birth to new ones, and what used to be life becomes an archival record that protects against forgetting, becomes a memory soaked in nostalgia or a story that may not necessarily be based on the truth. However, instead of being a chronicler of his era, and through his photographs an archivist or documentarian, Ivan Hrkas chose the completely opposite direction in his creative path. He decided not to revive and reconstruct what once was or to sing of what is no longer there, but much more difficult, but also more challenging, to find places where our past, long gone, still lives. In the case of this exhibition, we are talking about Rijeka’s Pecine beach, known among locals as Trojka, a place that may not be the only one, but certainly one of the few where customs have turned into rituals and thus survived”
Ivana Udovičić, art historian
Biography
Ivan Hrkaš was born in Sarajevo in 1978. After finishing primary school, he moved to Israel, where he lived from 1992 to 1998, and graduated from Seligsberg High school in Jerusalem and was awarded the honour of student of his generation. Though he enrolled in the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts Becalel in Jerusalem, in 1998 he decided to move back to Sarajevo and continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts – graphic design department. He received his BA Graphic Design diploma in 2004 and in 2011 MA Diploma in Photography.
In January 2005 he started to work at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo as an assistant to professor Mehmed A. Akšamija for Photography. In 2011 he become associate professor and in 2016 professor. In 2022 he was promoted to full professor status in the field of Photography. From 2012 to 2013 he worked as a guest professor at the Design Academy in Ljubljana,Slovenia, for photography. The last 12 years he has been mostly involved with social documentary photography.
Ivan Hrkaš exhibited in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Croatia, China, Israel, Montenegro, Mexico, Slovenia, Serbia, Tunisia, UK and USA and received numerous awards at different festivals. He participated in the organisation of the Sarajevo Winter Festival and took part in different local and international projects in the field of arts and culture. Currently, he is engaged in the project of promoting the photo depot of the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He publishes graphic works and photographs both in local and foreign magazines. His photographs where published in local and international magazines. In May 2017. his first photo book, Bamitbah was published, to which the prominent writer Miljenko Jergović dedicated a column in Jutarnji list (Saturday matinee), and included it among the 17 best books of 2017 (in third place).