Karla Šuler

Untitled
2008
Installation (ink-jet print, 205 x 405 cm)

The work is the result of a wish to question the art institution, the event of the exhibition, and the institutionalisation of art, as well as its role in society. It seems that, paradoxically, in spite of the influence of globalisation, new media technologies, progressive ideas, models of mediation, and the aspirations of artists and curators, the communication between art and the average spectator is often difficult and limited to the relation curator – artist – the informed public. Curatorial concepts and artistic practices in the public sphere try to make a difference, led by the wish to emancipate and popularise art, but the discourse they use is often hermetic and doesn’t communicate or address the average spectator or her/his needs, but remains non-transparent, speaking only to a closed milieu. The need to use toilet facilities functions here as a common denominator – a poster on the façade of the central Croatian art institution and the House of Croatian visual artists reads: During the 29th Youth Salon, HDLU offers you the possibility of using its toilet facilities, without the obligation of visiting the exhibition. The poster on the building of the HDLU thus functions on two levels: as an artwork (art), but also as a clear and utterly banal message in which an institution addresses the basic physical need of every passer-by. When it appears as art, it also represents the vox populi, verbalising the very act of non-comprehension of contemporary art and materialising the distance between art and the average spectator, trying in this way, through the reduction of any obligatory engagement on part of the latter, to “rectify” it.

Karla Šuler (1980, Zagreb, HR) is in her finishing year of studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Department of Pedagogy. Recent group exhibitions include Speak up, Galerija Nova, Zagreb; Queer fest, klub Fleda, Brno, Češka; 28th Youth Salon, HDLU, Zagreb; Movement, Young Choreographers Platform, Galerija Stančić, Zagreb; New fragments 3, HDLU, Zagreb; No name, HDLU, Zagreb; Project 6 (Exchange Experience Explore), Galerija SC, Zagreb; Project 6 – Stereotypes and prejudice, Galerija Karas, Zagreb. She is based in Zagreb.