Vuk Ćuk

On Friday, November 24, 2023, at 7 PM, the  Trotoar Gallery in Zagreb will open a new exhibition ‘Stranger Danger’. After two solo presentations of local artists, Trotoar is now introducing an exhibition from a series of collaborations.  Trotoar is hosting Eugster II Belgrade gallery, featuring artists Saša Tkačenko, Vuk Ćuk, and Julija Zaharijević. The exhibition curator is Natalija Paunić.

The artistic practices of Saša Tkačenko, Vuk Ćuk, and Julija Zaharijević will be introduced to the Zagreb audience for the first time, which goes in line with the gallery’s annual programmatic focus to foster meaningful relationships with international galleries and/or curators. Through a series of invited galleries and curators, Trotoar aims to explore and present a broad range of regionally and internationally relevant artists, stimulate the exchange of perspectives, and contribute to the interconnection of contemporary artistic production. The first invited gallery, Eugster || Belgrade, represents internationally successful artists from the region and has participated at numerous relevant European and global contemporary art fairs in recent years.

The exhibition will be open until January 13, 2024, and artists will present their latest works, including several site-specific pieces created specifically for the Trotoar gallery. Additionally, there will be artist talks as part of the program, along with the release of Saša Tkačenko’s ‘Anxiety artist book,’ a publication comprising 365 pages in a limited edition of 3+2AP.

From the exhibition foreword by curator Natalija Paunić:

The show brings together practices of three artists who offer different reflections on reality. The signature piece (Saša Tkačenko – Unknown, talk to unknown), placed in the window of the gallery, advertises a call for caution with neon light, literally showcasing the words ‘stranger’ and ‘danger’ and setting a tone even before the space is entered. The nouns that rhyme come from Vladimir Nabokov’s reflection on individualist hardship, translated into the context of today’s social traps. On the other hand, while some of Nabokov’s words seemed progressive or supportive of liberal thinking, his chauvinist statements (for example, his “doubt” in women writers) cast a different light on his persona. That every reality is multilayered comes across in Julija Zaharijević’s work too, who uses the mutable nature of symbols to the advantage of many possible interpretations. The works that are shown at Trotoar disfigure the typical Chesterfield sofa pattern, a well-known visual token often associated with the patriarchal view on success, wealth or beauty (all of which might be interchangeable in this view). The buttons are no longer placed in the familiar grid, but rather take on a hybrid form, simulating an organic process of disintegration with no control, turning onto oneself, a cancerous growth. By analogy, this process applies to the adulthood of a generation that matured in parallel to the Internet. The loss of control over our own online behaviors and data, the ultimate burnout from a continuous presence, comes across through Vuk Ćuk’s practice. His works are made of collected objects that are considered useless, strange, and mass-produced, mostly purchased via Ali-Express. Placed on the gallery floor, they are arranged into ritualistic shapes that do not replicate plain circles, but smiley faces – a symbol that is essentially as abstract as the next thing.