The eight edition of the Croatian contemporary visual arts award T-HT@msu.hr, jointly presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU), Zagreb, and Hrvatski Telekom, was announced in a media conference held in the Museum of Contemporary Art on 11 March.
As in earlier years, the presentation of awards is preceded by an exhibition of the selected works which will be open form 13 March to 12 April. More than 200 works of art was applied for the competition this year, and a committee of experts comprising Snježana Pintarić, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and president of the committee of expert, Leonida Kovač, art theorist, Peter Kogler, multimedia artist from Munich, Igor Španjol, curator of Modern Gallery, Ljubljana, and Leila Topić, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, selected 31 works of art and another three works of art the authors of which were invited to participate in the exhibition.
A total of four prizes will be awarded, three of which are purchase prizes – the first prize amounts to HRK 50,000, the second prize amounts to HRK 45,000 and the third prize amounts to 40,000 – and the purchased works of art will become a part of the T-H@MSU collection. The audience award will also be presented, in the amount of HRK 10,000.
At the media conference, Snježana Pintarić, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and President of the Committee of Experts talked about the project and the award. She pointed out that it is an important event that has already traditionally been presenting the relevant cross-section of the situation in the Croatian contemporary art.
„The award was established in 2007 with an aim of promoting the latest artistic practices in the visual arts segment. Since then up until today, we have presented more than 200 artists who use the most versatile media and form their artistic reality in the most versatile manner“, said Ms. Pintarić.
Exhibition Accompanied By a Rich Program of Workshops and Family Saturdays
Antonija Jergović, acting director of the HT Corporate Communications Department and Snježana Pintarić, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and President of the committee of experts.
The opening of the exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art on 13 March will include a performance by Niko Mihaljević and NO gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
„The exhibition and the selected works of art include a broad generational, media, expressional and problematical spectrum, and the artists, this year, dealt not only with their own ideas, concepts and stories but a visual language, images, objects and a language within the very segment of visualization,“ said Pintarić. She added that the fact that besides numerous young artists, a number of renowned artist and students also applied for the contest, makes her especially happy.
The curator of the exhibition and the author of the art collection emphasized that the exhibition, which will be opened until 12 April, will be accompanied by a rich program of workshops, family Saturdays, and five discussions with artists, as well as that the winners of the competition will be announced in the last exhibition week.
Antonija Jergović, acting director of the Corporate Communications Department of Hrvatski Telekom, which is the main sponsor of the award, pointed out that the main principles in selection of the cultural projects are equal to the company's business principles and include excellence, innovation, originality and importance for the society in general and that T-HTnagrada@msu.hr fully meets these criteria.
The member of the committee of experts, Igor Španjol said that the majority of this year's selected works of art are from the field of photography, then film and video, whereas a smaller part of the selected works of art are painting, drawings and sculptures. “Their thematic and formal spectrum is exceptionally broad, and, so to say, all the works deal with monumentalization of banality“, said Španjol. “The exhibition is based on contracts, confrontation of irreconcilable tones and poetics, and the two thematic determinants that are constantly interwoven are culturalization of nature and chaos of urban tissue“, he added.
This year’s exhibition presents ten photographers – Tanja Deman, Igor Ilić, Davor Konjikušić, Ana Opalić, Neven Petrović, Marina Paulenka, Jasenko Rasol, Marko Vojnić, Borko Vukosav and Ino Zeljak. The authors of paintings and drawings Grgur Akrap, Sven Klobučar, Ivica Malčić, Katarina Ivanšin and Janko Ivčić also compete for the four prizes.
In terms of film and video media, the exhibition presents the following artists: Ana Bilankov, Boris Cvjetanović, Matija Debeljuh, Željko Kipke, Sabina Mikelić, and two video installations – one of Tanja Vujasinović titled “Neisporučeni neoni gospodina Lackovića” and the other of Predrag Pavić “Šiljenje u kut”.
The exhibition also includes spatial works of art of the following artists: Aleksandar Garbin, Vesna Rohaček and Dora Đurkasac, Miran Šabić and Marko Tadić. Željko Kipke will present himself with the film "Unyielding Look into the Future", Jelena Lovrec with digital photographs titled "Mein Kulturkampf", Igor Ruf with his work "Stol s brdima" and Mirna Pokorić with her combined-technique work.
Furthermore, the exhibition will also present Nikola Vrljić and his “Autoportret” in acrylic resin, Sabina Mikelić with a bunch of routs bound together titled “Mula”, and Niko Mihaljević and his performance “Soft Temple II: Cruciverbia de Molli Templo II".
The artist Lovro Artuković, as the invited artist, presents himself with two new works, "Ženski akt koji razmišlja" and "Drugi rad"; Martina Kramer presents her ambient installation "Penroseove zvijezde – 3/5" with light as a theme, and Goran Škofić presents himself with his video installations "Crno" and "Zamračenje".