Igor Kuduz: "Behind the Eyes"

The Spot Gallery and the Office for Photography invite you to the opening of the exhibition Behind the Eyes by the artist Igor Kuduz, which will be held on Monday, 14th September 2026, at 7:00 p.m. The official opening with a photobook presentation and conversation with the author starts at 7:30 p.m. The exhibition will remain open until 2nd October 2026.

Igor Kuduz, “Behind the Eyes”

we have to forget the ideas we already have. that is very difficult.

what is lit before me is devoid of context, of content; there is no stage, no characters, no roles, no action, no dramaturgy. only fragments of scenery that simply happens to be around me.

I came to know this on those night hikes. the essential need for ‘things as they truly are’ in an utterly pared-down world (darkness, the light of a single lamp). a physical need for precise truth, for a truthful image that will help me say, ‘aha, I know!’ or ‘aha, everything is all right!’

emptiness is threatening, and at the same time full of promise.

words are not precise either. with words, even when I manage to come closer, I am still only in the antechamber of what is.

I am merely a mediator, a courier. I cannot do more than that.

when you come to realize that, in some places, the tools you’ve gathered throughout your life are of no use at all – I think those are the most valuable experiences.

I won’t lie: working with Igor Kuduz was one of the more intense experiences I’ve ever had. An exchange. Getting to know one another. An exercise in trust. And in nerves. Testing, and then crossing, one’s own boundaries – I’ve certainly benefited from that.

Igor Kuduz’s photographs take shape through walking. In fact, that’s not true. The scenes photographed are only fragments of a much longer process of photographing – departures, returns, and everything that came before. These photographs are not documents of a particular destination, but notes on time spent in motion, on a body moving and finding its way, on the unreliability of memory. On survival. Walking is an exercise in endurance, more mental more than physical (as walking, especially solitary walking, always is).

The photobook and the accompanying projection of photographs are entitled Behind the Eyes. Photography, of course, is never limited to what lies before the eyes.

My looking is a continuation of your process of photographing. The photograph-as-document lies at the midpoint of that process, the only fixed point from which lines extend infinitely in both directions.

When Igor invited me to join him by writing a text (or texts) for the book, even if we get lost along the way, I took him literally, but also deadly seriously. I found my way into the book through stories that, to me, seem to emerge behind the eyes with the same painful inevitably as images.

There is no need for spectacle. Only fragments within a brief slice of time. Living breath by breath. That’s all we can do. That’s enough.

Iva Prosoli

Igor Kuduz, “Behind the Eyes”

Igor Kuduz (Zagreb, 1967) graduated from the Graphic Arts Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1995. He has exhibited his work at exhibitions and video festivals in Zagreb, Split, Ljubljana, Clermont-Ferrand, Bonn, Budapest, Berlin, Aachen, Dessau, Tirana, Cairo, Trieste, New York, and elsewhere. His artistic practice primarily encompasses drawing, video, and photography. Since 1995, he has run a visual communications studio specializing in publishing and exhibition projects. He collaborates with numerous cultural institutions, galleries, and museums on the production of exhibitions, as well as on the design of publications and visual identities, for which he has received a number of international awards and honours.

His publishing projects include collaborations with prominent international cultural institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Camera Austria, Graz; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Kunstmuseum Bochum; and the Goethe-Institut. Since 2013, he has taught at the Department of Media Design at University North in Koprivnica. He is one of the founders of the Institute for Contemporary Art. From 2012 to 2015, he was a member of the Board of the Croatian Designers Association (HDD). For some reason, he lives and works in Zagreb.