EXHIBITION: "BLACK IN INFRA(RED)" AT THE GALLERY of Sv. IVAN ZELINA AS PART OF THE 19TH NIGHT OF MUSEUMS
On 31 January 2024, at 19:00, 2024. as part of of the 19th Museum Night, "the Gallery of Sv. Ivan Zelina will host the exhibition “Black in Infra(red), in the Field of Infrared Black Painting” by Dijana Nazor Čorda. With this exhibition, the painter presents her recent series of black paintings created in the period 2018 – 2023 using the InfraredArt method in the combined technique of acrylic, gilding, fluorescent and phosphorescent paints. An additional special feature is the catalogue, which provides some reproductions of images printed in the two spectra.
The exhibition "Black in Infra(red)" comprises twenty paintings created using a new method of infrared painting, along with several animations of the exhibited paintings. In this series, the author examines the possibilities and ways of obtaining hues by mixing black in two inseparable visual expressions that are in symbiosis on the same medium in the visible and NIR spectrum. The author started research of infrared painting in 2012 as part of her PhD programme at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb. Fascinated by black colours/pigments, she continues to question their properties in order to explore the inexhaustible possibilities of infrared sensations through the, so-called, colour twins in the spectrum invisible to the naked eye. As of 2023, she introduced a novelty in the first layer of each image by marking it with numbers that are hidden along the monogram in the infrared image.
She used the method drawing on the InfraReDesign and InfraRedArt innovations developed in 2007 in Zagreb by Prof. Emeritus Vilko Žiljak with his research team. Since 2014, Nazor Čorda has been continuously enhancing her multifaceted research of pigment/colour properties in the two spectra. Using modern IR cameras, visitors of the exhibition of abstract paintings will be able to discover in the underlying image figurative paintings depicting labyrinths, portraits and Christian motifs with signatures hidden to the naked eye, thus making the invisible visible.
The curator of the exhibition, Sanda Stanaćev Bajzek, an art historian, wrote about Dijana’s work in the preface to the text of the exhibition:
"With the new exhibition, Dijana Nazor Čorda upholds the constant in presenting her own work of art, which always consists of conceptual unity of the creative experience based on contemplation and structuring of the space of the infrared (IR) image, which is so much more than a mere technological innovation and aesthetic sensation. It is an image that sustains the identity of a work of art whose system of harmonious signs tends towards the purity and universality of artistic language, and testifies to the uniqueness of artistic syntax based on the reductionist approach of building a monochrome image field. By shaping it with a concentrated brushstroke and a reduced palette, Dijana has built her own system of pictorial and morphological organisation of the space of her "black painting", giving priority to pure form and clearly structured composition on both levels – the one visible to the naked eye and the "invisible" one, hidden in the IR spectrum. (…) There are clear symbolic forms in the painting, evoking the states of the author's creative consciousness anchored in strong cerebral activity, but also the desire to "teach" the viewer's eye to perceive in a different way. (…) Therefore, this new exhibition underlines the painter's individuality corresponding to her artistic and scientific experience. Because, by setting within her own creation clear goals and high criteria for autonomous expression, she created a unique image not as a conceptual duress, but as a result of the need to constantly evolve. She sets out with a self-portrait in a rectangular black painting, and ends with the portrait of the creator of IR technology in the centre of the black square labyrinth."
Musical framework: pianist Vitomir Ivanjek
The exhibition is open to visitors until February 17 with prior notice at: 091 181 2946 or 098 667756.
Additional information:
Sv. Ivan Zelina Gallery
Mob.: 091 181 2946
Exhibition Catalogue (.pdf) Dijana Nazor_katalog_Zelina_28.1_web 2