THE ART GALLERY SPOT was opened in 2015 with the idea of establishing and providing constant and reliable means and premises for exhibiting and promoting modern photography, particularly the type with conceptual and neo-avant-garde tendencies from the 1970s onwards, and recent documentary-conceptual and socially proactive photography.
It’s chief aims are the promotion, development and production of new art projects and works, the popularisation of documentary-conceptual and neo-avant-garde photography, as well as the creation of a nourishing environment for conversations and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills in the field of neo-avant-garde photography. The name of the gallery implies its programmatic orientation while also expressing ideas promoted in the 70s in the magazine Spot, which are still relevant today: They are ideas on the significance of photography, the need to raise the general visual literacy and the medium’s own need for emancipation. For it is a sad fact that the development of advanced artistic practices in the field of modern photography faces many challenges and obstacles, and the production, distribution and promotion of conceptual and socially proactive photographic works are difficult at best. The advanced traditionalization of our society together with retrograde actions which undermine the integrity of cultural institutions and artistic and humanistic education have (once again) marginalised conceptual artistic practices and have made organisations, galleries and museums specialising in promoting, producing and distributing works in this field a rare thing indeed.
The program of Spot Gallery was designed as a series of didactic exhibition units created and coordinated by The Office for Photography (UzF). Apart from exhibitions the program includes activities aimed to raise visual literacy. The gallery’s annual program is made up of 6 to 8 exhibitions, some of which are curatorial concepts of UzF’s finest, while others are freelance curatorial projects and again others are submitted through open calls for artists and are chosen by the Gallery’s council, who also consult on the annual program’s development. The opening night of every exhibition is accompanied by a public dialogue with the artist, as well as public panel discussions, reading groups, workshops for students and promotions of books and magazines published by UzF. The hosted panel discussions with keynote speakers connect the topic of the exhibition and/or another type of artistic work with a wider local art-and-culture scene, revealing the similarities between the authors’ poetics or thematically linked researches. The Reading groups are devoted to the analysis of texts on the theory of photography and visual arts, philosophy and culture studies and are directly linked to the topic of the current exhibition.
The aim of this type of program is the development of critical thinking and the analysis of works of art with the purpose of furthering artistic, social, historical and/or ideological contextualisation. The Gallery’s program complements UzF’s other activities, such as the in recent years developed online platform designed to connect artists, and whose aims include the developing the distribution of artistic works both in Croatia and abroad through various collaborations.
The members of the Gallery’s council in the time to come are as follows: Sandro Đukić, Leonida Kovač, Hrvoje Slovenc and the representatives of the Office for Photography.
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