GORAN PETERCOL - Galerija Gregor Podnar.

GORAN PETERCOL
PORTFOLIO
Lindenstr. 35 | 10969 Berlin | Germany | tel. +49 30 259 346 51 | fax +49 30 259 346 52 | berlin@gregorpodnar.com | www.gregorpodnar.com
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There is no empty space. Within the context of art, space is
a kind of ready-made.
Goran Petercol in conversation with Ivana Sajko, 2002
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Sjene (shadow)
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Sjene (40 A)
installation; wire, brass, light variable dimension, brass element: 3 x 150 mm, 1989
At the beginning of the 1980s Goran Petercol staged his first installation, working with found objects - neutral,
unpromising elements such as wire, boards, bricks, rods, and so on - onto which he used spotlights to direct the
flow of light and obtain the element of shadow. This releases a process of what might be termed «organized
randomness» where the first impulse would appear to be followed by the whole series of intentional and aleatory
operations, the former only partially distinct from the latter. On the one hand we have the phenomenon of
spontaneity, unchecked randomness and controlled process, on the other the question of the object and shadow,
the reflection and the image, or drawing with light.
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Sjene (19)
installation; wire, brass, light, variable dimension, brass element: 3 x 150 mm, 1993
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Sjene (135)
installation; brass, light, 3 x 300 mm, 1993
The light source is pointing directly on the the metal stick in the wall. The shadow is to be understood as a point or
rather as a progression of the wire-sculpture in the wall.
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Sjene
Installation - lamp, pipe on pedestal, variable dimension, 1990
Exhibition view at Galerija Gregor Podnar, 2009, and detail
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Sjene (86)
Metal, wire light,, variable dimension, 1992
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Sjene (150)
Aluminum, mirrors, approx. 70 x 50 x 25 cm, 1994
Disappearance offers itself as a metaphor. I see disappearance and absence as a matter of quantity. Shadow is a
smaller quantity of light, not its complete absence. Quantity presupposes limitations. For instance, a series is
endless only in the idea; once executed in material, it is merely a part. It is limited by space, gallery, materials..
Each project is limited by the quantity available. By the fact of necessity of break which I build into my work, I take it
out of the context of Constructivism.
Goran Petercol in conversation with Tihomir Milovac, 1994
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Sjene (155)
installation; brass, light, variable dimension, brass element: 3 x 150 mm, 1998
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Sjene (113)
Plate, mirrors, approx. 40 x 30 x 15 cm, Second version of three, 1994
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Enlarged Shadow (for 5cm)
installation (light, brass pipe: l = 15 cm, clay), 10 x 19,5 x 16 cm, 1987/88
In Enlarged Shadows, the shadow is just a base, like a cut form of the surface from which, for instance, I lift the
material to a certain height. They leave the surface. These works are similar to sculptures.
Goran Petercol, Interview with Tihomir Milovac, 1994
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Negatives
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Negative (18)
Installation (spotlight, lamp, projection of shape-slide projector), ca. 45 x 40 x 14 cm, 1996
The shadow of an object is a digression, and as such it opens up digressive space: a space of the ability to move
where method continues to find a shelter for its own visibility. Once the shadow is removed, the digressive space
closes, the object is expanded, immobilizing the method and leaving it visible. The method of immobilization in the
field of its own induction. The method of enlightenment in the space of its consequences: in the system where
everything incompatible with the measure of calculation and utility is held suspicious, the system in which the
number has become a canon. Including the number of dimensions which one is allowed to grasp. Petercol’s
Negative makes visible the dimension censored by this system, a dimension of transposition.
Leonida Kovač, Zagreb, 1995
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Negative (7)
Part of the installation at Croatian Pavillion, Venice Biennale, 1995
Collection: Moderna galerija, Ljubljana
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Negative (4)
Installation 1995
Collection: Watermill Collection, New York
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Negative
Installation at Contemporary Art Center Sacio Umano, Milan (1999), 1998
Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo
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Stop
Light installation, electric bulb, slide projector, 2011
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Boxes
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Fenster (Window) I - V
Light box, Variable dimension 1997
Between the office and the exhibition area, there is a window. Through this window the light from the gallery office
projects the form of the window opening onto the wall of the exhibition room. I began my series from this form of
light on the wall. I photographed the light form, so as to be able to copy it, or rather to cut the hole in the cardboard.
The cardboard with the hole forms one side of a metal case holding a lamp; the hole is facing the wall, thus
continually repeating the projection procedure between the to rooms. All further boxes were produced according to
the same procedure.
Goran Petercol, 1997
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View of 2 of the 4 further Fenster (Window) installations
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Bathroom
1999
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Bathroom
Bathroom elements, electric bulb, variable dimension, 1999
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Flashes
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Flashes
projections onto the lamps, Galerija umjetnina, Split, 2002
In 2002 I photographed with flash the interior of the depot of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, its empty
gallery, found objects... the images contained the shadows of the photographed objects. Shadows created by the
camera’s flash. I separated the contours of the shadows from the images and transfered them on to metal globes to
be used for later projecting. I then touched the projected forms to light sources like windows, doors, lamps...
Goran Petercol
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projection close to window, Art Gallery, Split
Flash
projection close to mirror, Art Gallery, Split, 2002
Collection: Galerija umjetnina, Split.
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Angles
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Angle
Installation (spotlight, lamp, projection of shape-slide projector) 1997
one of the existing angles has been adapted for the following work
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Angle
Sculptures in two parts: metal elements and projection from a light box, variable dimension, 1997
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Angle
Sculptures in two parts: metal elements and projection from a light box, variable dimension, 1997
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Mould
2003
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Mould
Spotlight, aluminum, 300 x 140 (diameter at the basis), 2003
Installation view at Art Unlimited. Basel, 2009
A spotlight, hung vertically from the ceiling of the exhibition’s space at a height of 3 meters above the bottom,
displays its ray of light downward. An aluminum cone covers the voluminous shape molded by the ray of light.
Goran Petercol created a multi-facetted installation where the tangible nature of the involved object and the
abstract qualities of the light challenge the spectator’s logic. The work is neither the image nor the object, but the
visualization of their reciprocal relationship.
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IN & OUT
2003
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IN & OUT
installation outside of the building during the night, 2003
Exhibitions Blut & Honig, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg/ Vienna
I constructed a box the size of an exhibition space on the Sammlung Essl Museum. Against a room with one
window, I set a new room of the identical size and connected them with an open window. The museum window
faced the new space, filled with strong light which penetrated inside the museum. Surfaces of the space, or rather
the box as was the case in the work named In & Out, provide a form for the light body. The light marks the interior
of the box, somehow compressed but continuously shining. When the window of the illuminated room is opened,
light spills onto the wall of the neighbouring room. And when I am in that space (box)? Looking at the illuminated
object presupposes an encounter with the light source. The light travels from its source to its object, together with
my sight, allowing me to enter the object itself. When the window is opened, my gaze transfers outside the room.
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Reflections
2005
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Reflections
Lotr__ak and Dverce, Zagreb
projections on the façades, 2005
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After Reflections
2007
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After Reflection (7)
Wooden chair, electric bulb, 46,5 x 35 x 35 cm, 2007
Is it possible to imagine a gallery where there are no spaces left in between the exponents? In the process of
setting up an exhibition, those spaces are presumed and emerge naturally. When I introduce an object in the
gallery, I am not only introducing its form but also the additional form of the space between itself and the wall (and
window, floor, corner of the room…). An empty gallery is a form of space, for example a quadrant, and when an
object is introduced, it complicates that form - it is no longer a quadrant, or, it is no longer limited only by six sides
(four walls, ceiling and floor), but also by the sides of the object introduced. Set-up thus creates a form.
I have exposed the works in which I am exploring the space between the object and the wall, the object and the
corner… the object and the gallery. I maximally reduce the space between them and then illuminate that
interspace. I illuminate ‘something’ because it is ‘nothing’. I cut a part of a chair in order to create space for a light
bulb. That space, the room between points A and B, has always fascinated me. It contains movement, journey, and
it is important for living space, for the environment… I am constantly realising new significations. All these works
have some form of violence inside them - as if I am communicating reality through violence over form. Maybe that
is the source of dramatic tension?
Goran Petercol
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After Reflection (4)
Ceramic plate, achrystal, 7 x 33 x 31,5 cm, 2007
After Reflection (5)
Ceramic plate, achrystal, 8 x 28 x 27,5 cm, 2007
A ceramic mass of 5 cm is added to the original dimensions of an object as materialized interspace. This
establishes a reconnection between the original and a creative process based on the chance occurrence of a
broken form.
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From Pula
Light installation: lamp, cable, bulb, pedestal, variable dimension, 2008
The light installations From Pula (2008) deals with the way the purpose of a utilitarian object is changed by
exhibiting it. The pedestal serves to physically enable the exhibit to be better displayed, implying the notion that an
object becomes an exhibit by the act of selection, even before it is placed in the gallery.
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Lamp
Light installation: two pedestals, lamp, variable dimension, 2010
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Symmetries
from 2008
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Symmetries
Glass, glue, 24 x 9 x 9 cm, 2011
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Symmetries (9)
Light, wall paper, pencil, Approx. 35 x 35 cm (lamp) + variable dimension, 2008
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Symmetries
Glass, concrete, 34,5 x 15 x 15 cm, 2009
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Symmetries (24)
Glass, wood, 42 x 93 x 40 cm, 2010
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15 Views of Glass
2009
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Installation view of ’15 views of glass’ at Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin, 2009
Goran Petercol’s small sculptures are based on the idea that an object can become a measure in the enlargement
or reduction of another object through the use of concrete to materialize the interstitial space.
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Pipe
Pipe, concrete, 20 x 20 x 20 cm, 2009
Glass
Glass, concrete, 20 x 19 x 19 cm, 2009
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Beer Can
Aluminum, concrete, 17 x 19 x 19 cm, 2009
Glass
Glass, concrete, 11 x 32 x 33 cm, 2009
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Objects
2011
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Window
Wood, glass, Polyurethane, 2011
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Fork
Metal, Polyurethane, 38 x 4 x 4 cm, 2011
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Holes
Wood, 45 x 39 x 39, 2007-2011
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Wall Lamp
Lamp, polyurethane, 61 x 15 x 16 cm, 2011
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Glass
2001
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(Martini) Glass
Aluminum, approx. 20 x 10 x 10 cm, each ed. of 5, 2001
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(Beer) Glass 2001 (Wine) Glass 2001
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Drawings
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Symmetries (with Glass)
Pencil, India ink, cut paper, 42 x 30 cm, 2009
The Symmetries drawings consist of copied forms in relation to a given axis, plane or centre of rotation. They relate
to the concrete sculptures in the choice of objects and shapes, and to their clear decisions about the rules of
execution; as Petercol says, “By making certain decisions, I established the border of execution in advance or did
away with the interstitial space of the object.”
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Symmetries (with Glass) 2009
Symmetries (with Glass) 2009
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At the right angle (3)
Ink on paper, 36,6 x 23,5 cm, 1984
When I do something within art I feel that this comes from the same creativity as when I don’t do something. I
deeply believe that if the concepts with which I find my artworks, just as the artworks themselves, arise from what I
live, what I see, then my work cannot be outside of time. It doesn’t depend on age. It is important for me to find a
true reason to work and this can be only in what I live. And it is all the same to me whether I find the beginning of
the reason to work within myself, within nature, art or in-between cultural, sociological, political contexts... because
all that together makes reality. And so if I give up on the perception of reality, I have given up on my art. If in that
case I would still continue to work, you should then tell me that you have a problem with my work.
Goran Petercol, in conversation with Ivana Sajko, 2006
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Within Arm’s reach (Line)
Marker on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 1977
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Halves (11)
Pencil on paper, 21 x 29,5 cm, 1985
There is an anology - to draw a line between A and B - in the context of drawing means to write a sentence. You
know your full sentence (...) as I know my position B. So, from A I move towards B and I calculate a half: stop (If
you don’t know your B then there’s no half). The viewer gets what he sees. I lead him with half written sentences.
Don’t think I underestimate the viewer or that I’m mocking him. I’m simply expressing some truth. One of my
greatest obsessions is a banal experience that I keep seeing only a fragment of a bigger whole, that wholeness
evades me, and that which I experience as wholeness is only a detail of something bigger. In Halves it is as if I’m
saying: I give half of what I think is wholeness, then I will not be in doubt that I have given a fragment.
Goran Petercol, in conversation with Ivana Sajko, 2006
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Untitled
paper collage, 60 x 47 cm, 1985
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Shadow of a Pencil
Pencil on paper (framed), 29 x 36 cm each, 1989
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GORAN PETERCOL
Born 1949 in Pula, Croatia
He lives and works in Zagreb
Solo exhibitions
2011
Objects, Galerija Klovićevi dvori, Zagreb, Croatia
2010
SAM (Selected Art Model), Cologne
The Things, Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milan
2009
Galerija Gregror Podnar, Berlin
Art Unlimited at Art Basel, Galerija Gregor Podnar and Galleria Suzy Shammah
2007
After Reflections, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana
Side Wind, Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milan
2006
Unplugged / Brez struje, Gliptoteka, Zagreb
2005
RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
Reflections, Klovićevi dvori, Zagreb
2004
Drawing, Drawing, (with Dan Perjovschi), Galerija Gregor Podnar, Kranj
Galerija Moria, Stari Grad, Hvar
2002
Flashes, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb
2001
Light, Moderna galerija, Studio Josip Račić, Zagreb
1999
Centro Arte Contemporana Spazio Umano, Milan
1998
Izazov prostora, PM Galerija Zagreb (with V. Pokas und T. Gecan-Savić)
IFA Galerie, Bonn
1997
Fenster, Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna
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Frames, Galerija Škuc, Ljubljana; (1998) Mali salon, Rijeka
1996
Krabice/Boxes, Medium Gallery, Bratislava
1995
Zagreb-Riga, Galerija M6, Riga
1993
Written Line, Galerija Dante, Umag
1992
Contrepoint, Lorette Ateliers d´artistes de la ville de Marseille, Marseille
1991
Sala Umberto Boccioni (with J. Hadzifejzović, D. Rakoci), Milan
1990
Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna
1989
Galerija Suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb
Group exhibitions
2011
Dialogos, Assab One, Turin, Italy
2010
Roaming. Heterotopias, Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts de Lausanne
Starter -Works from the Vehbi Koc Foundation Contemporary Art Collection, ARTER Istanbul, Turkey. Curated by
René Block
Moderna (post) moderna, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Istre, Pula
Ellipse/Eclipse part II, Galerie schleicher+lange, Paris. In the framework of 'Berlin-Paris, un échange de galeries'
2009
Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York. Curated by Chris Sharp
2007
Central Europe Revisited I, Schloss Esterhazy, Eisenstadt, Austria
Like to like II, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin
2006
Venture II, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana
The Sun on the Wall steirischer herbst, Graz
Arteast Collection 2000+23, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana
Trajectory 1, LCCA Riga
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2005
Nothingness, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Kranj
Galerija Adris, Rovinj
Blue salon, Zadar
39th Salon in Zagreb, HDLU, Zagreb
Light Art from Artificial Light, ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe
2004
Nothingness, Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz
Jedan podzemni vrt, Palace of Dioklecian, Split
Mass, HDLU, Zagreb
2003
In den Schluchten des Balkan, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel
2000
2000+ Arteast collection, Metelkova/Moderna galerija, Ljubljana
Rund um, Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna
1999
the stockholm connection, (elsewhere 4, Attitudes / somewhere else, Galerija Škuc), ACC Galerie, Weimar
Aspekte/Positionen, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna
1998
Spatiale Malerei, Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna
Sensitivities, European Academy for the Arts, London
1997
United Enemies, Galeria Jiři Švestka, Prague
Schwere-Los, Landesgalerie, Linz; Ludwig Museum, Budapest
1996
Oktlon, Moderna galerija, Zagreb
(Antartica) Brahma, Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, Vienna
1995
XLVI Biennale di Venezia, Croatian Pavilion, Venice
4th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul
1994
Translucent Writings, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York
Zentrum Zagreb - Skulptur in Kroatien 1950-1990, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg
22. Sao Paolo Biennial, Sao Paolo
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