The Crawling Armageddon by Tomislav Brajnović (Zagreb, 1965), offers a cross section of works created from the end of the 1990s onwards. Many of these works have rarely been presented in public. This kaleidoscopic display gathers approximately twenty works, including installations, objects, ready-made series, videos and acoustic compositions. It represents a relatively short, turbulent history of the new millennium, in which totalitarian elements of the past century return to us like timed bombs. From Odyssey (2004), to The Law of Love, to Soldier in Ripe Wheat (2015), these works reflect on the consequences of frenetic production and exploitation of material resources. Sometimes they express a sound of transcendence, a transcendence that seems elusive in the agony of everydayness, where the clashes of reality are conveyed into the anxious feeling of time flow, moving from silence to turbulence. Hence, the need for reversing the dictate of time and finding a better future becomes crucial, but there is an open question of how to attain this. The author says: The only (im)possible revolution is the revolution of consciousness. Human consciousness today does not differ much from the consciousness that existed before or after the French or October Revolution. Nothing has changed here; the only progress that has been made is the progress in HD broadcast of the never-ending revolution… The idea of Earth as Eden and the question of who (if anyone) can reach it and how, represents the core of my artistic personality.

Curated by: Ksenija Orelj

The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue will be presented in the Istria Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017.
Acknowledgements: Muzej – Museo Lapidarium, Novigrad; the Rovinj Heritage Museum
Support: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, The County of Istria, The City of Rijeka, The City of Rovinj

Photo: Tomislav Brajnović, Wooden Angel , video, 2005.

For more information on the exhibition please click here.

For more information on Tomislav Brajnović please click here.