Exhibitions

What does so-called pure graphics represent?

A selection of graphic works by Mag. of Graphics, Dr. Igor Konjušak, Zagreb

Two facts left a strong impression in the exhibition spaces of Ljubljana: at the Ljubljana Society of Fine Artists on Breg 22, where, on the initiative of Mag. of Graphics and Professor, selected graphic works from Slovenian and pedagogical art academies were exhibited, as well as selected works by a Ljubljana graduate and professor of graphics at the Sarajevo Academy, together with selected graduates in October 2023. At the same time, in the spaces of Nova Univerza on Mestni Trg, graphic prints by Mag. and Prof. Nevenka Arbanas from Zagreb were presented this year.

Adapted greyness, restrained blackness, symmetry, more or less clear black lines, which we discovered as a kind of uniform lines at the first mentioned exhibition in selected graphics, mentored by academic painter and graphic artist Dževad Hozo, one of the most prominent representatives of the Ljubljana Graphic School and a student of Prof. Riko Debenjak. Hozo left Ljubljana together with his colleague and wife, academic painter Metka Kraigher. Despite difficult times, both held their pedagogical positions at the new Sarajevo Academy until their deaths.

We must not forget that strong ties remained between the two academies. At the Sarajevo Academy, the late Prof. Dr. Stane Bernik also collaborated for many years as a professor of art theory and design. Hozo also participated in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad as a representative of the Ljubljana Graphic School, as well as in solo presentations from Ljubljana and Bremen to São Paulo, where I, as his generational critic counterpart, accompanied him as one of the most convincing representatives of the Ljubljana Graphic School, whose prominence in the international art scene was first acknowledged by the young Italian critic Lea Vergine. Let us also not forget to mention Hozo’s book publications—his theories on intaglio printing and beyond, in encyclopedic scope, published by Mladinska Knjiga.

I feel that there has been enough introduction and warnings about the current happenings in our space, which somehow, whether intentionally or not, are dedicated to the future graphic biennale, which is expected to once again find its home in the spaces of our Modern Gallery next year.

We have in front of us about 15 new graphic prints, all in the drypoint technique, by Igor Konjušak. His biography states that this Zagreb student completed his master’s degree in 2012 at the Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts under Dževad Hozo. The latest works of the aforementioned Prof. Nevenka Arbanas in Ljubljana have already represented a certain type of monumentality, a result of the active collaboration of her colleague Igor Konjušak. The cause of this sensation was the size, the expansiveness, and the abstract restlessness and line strokes that seemed endless.

Igor Konjušak is essentially both an important and modest continuer, partly as a collaborator with his long-time Zagreb professor, and partly as an active participant in Croatian triennials of graphics and watercolor, perhaps also if we consider the revival (redivivus) of these ancient techniques. More on this could be learned in the monograph of the Splitski Brevijar by the renowned connoisseur, art historian, and critic Ivo Šimut Banov. Our artist also found the time to earn a Ph.D. under Prof. Ivica Šiško.

After discovering several recognizable homages to Dževad Hozo and Bogdan Borčić among the exhibited works, we uncover exceptional raster details, playful moments that pause in shadows, in reflectiveness and non-alienation simultaneously—a kind of incompleteness of Borčić’s graphics.

When we initially mentioned pure graphics, we can now say that this purity seems endless, that the author knows how to measure it, overlay it, withdraw it, and immediately abandon it. Do we dare to claim that this is a message of a new reality, or is it still a reminiscence of the present?

Aleksander Bassin

 

About the author

Igor Konjušak was born in 1957 in Zagreb. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, in the Department of Graphics, under the mentorship of Prof. Dževad Hozo, and in 2012, he completed his master’s degree under the same professor. He contributed to the production of two feature-length animated films, The Wonderful Forest and The Magician’s Hat, for Croatia Film.

From 1988 until the end of 1996, he designed crystal products for a glass factory. To date, he has exhibited in more than twenty solo exhibitions and around three hundred group exhibitions. He has published twenty portfolios of graphic works, both as solo and collaborative projects. He has participated in approximately seventy workshops in Croatia and abroad.

He has given numerous lectures at the National and University Library in Zagreb, the Print Cabinet of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and in the town of Bogenšperg in Slovenia. He regularly participates in the Splitgraphic biennales, Croatian graphic triennials, and the Croatian watercolor triennial. He has exhibited in Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2008, his monograph, authored by Ivo Šimat Banov, was published by Splitski Brevijar.

He has been a member of various professional associations, such as the Croatian Society of Film Workers, Likum, and HZSU. In 1989, he received the first prize for illustration on the theme “The Fight Against Alcoholism and Other Addictions” in Sarajevo. He earned his doctorate in 2016 and is currently employed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Alojz Konec