Silvestar Kolbas: "An Archive of the Unknown"

March 6th – 31st 2023

The Spot Gallery and the Office for Photography announce the exhibition An Archive of the Unknown by the artist Silvestar Kolbas. The exhibition opening will be held on 6th March at 7 p.m. at the Spot Gallery.

If we take into account that the gathering impulse played an important role in the evolution of the human race, it becomes clear that the urge to collect different objects is “inscribed” in our genetic code. Photography’s material properties make it an exceptionally adept medium for the act of collection, as well as the creation of personal archives. However, photographs very easily assume the properties of fetish, while Christian Metz in his essay “Photography and Fetish” (1985) states that by keeping the objects to which we ascribe various meanings, we achieve an inner pleasure and a sense of power. And while an ID photograph located inside a wallet of someone close to us does not represent anything unusual, the idea that it might be found in the hands of a complete stranger produces a sense of unease. Precisely this act of collecting discarded or lost photographs depicting people about whose identities we know very little, raises a series of questions – Who are the persons in the photographs? What could we possibly know about them? Why would anyone keep photographs of people they do not know anyway? Even though the General Data Protection Regulation was passed in order to lend citizens more control over their personal information, the medium of photography is faced with a series of questions, while freedom of artistic expression is particularly in jeopardy.

The problem exhibition was created out of artist Silvestar Kolbas’s need to critically examine the influence of the GDPR on everyday life. During an extended period of time, the artists collected ID photographs that became discarded objects in public space due to the negligence of their owners. At the same time searching for a response to the ethical question about the right to use other people’s photographs in an exhibition space, the author creates a private archive of the unknown, treating every photograph as an archaeological finding. The exhibition consists of three groups of photographs taken by someone else – ID photographs of unknown people serendipitously found in different places, their enlargements, and enlargements from developed negatives found next to a dumpster in a neighbourhood in Zagreb. By being placed in a gallery context, these objects become artistic artefacts that directly prod at the notion of personal data protection. This way, the author brings into question regulations that impede photographing people without their consent, while we are simultaneously exposed to cameras in public space on a daily basis. Even though the exhibition opens up various issues, the author presents motifs that reveal only partial information about what is depicted, and, in doing so, challenges the visitors by asking: What would you do if your private photographs were exhibited in a gallery space without your consent?

Tena Starčević

Silvestar Kolbas (Petrovci, 1956) is a photographer, cinematographer and film director, as well as a film educator. He graduated in Film and TV Cinematography from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, where he now works as a full professor. He worked as a cameraman at Television Zagreb / Croatian Radiotelevision from 1985 to 1996. Over the course of his career, he filmed numerous fiction, documentary and TV films and series, exhibited photographs and published and edited scientific works on cinematography. He occasionally works as a photographer. He has directed several auto-reflexive documentaries (“All about Eva”, “The War Reporter”, “20 Days in Tibet”) and experimental films (“Self-portrait V2.1”, “The Red Star Cinema”, “The Tower”, “The Film Factory”). His early exhibition is tied to the amateur film group Enthusia Planck and festival exhibitions Make Your Own Film (Sam snimi film) in Samobor (1975-1976). His authorial documentary and experimental films and photographic exhibitions often use an autobiographical starting point, while simultaneously problematising visual media.