As the Croatian curator Branko Franceschi stresses on the art of Željko Kipke at the “Art Pavillon in Zagreb” catalogue “The new series at the levels of content, form and aesthetics summarise the documentary and diaristic elements, Kipke’s recognisable artistic style and his idiosyncratic understanding of reality, and they should also be understood as a manifestation of his subversive activity and existence, which he calls the feline strategy.”(Zagreb, 12th September – 14th Octobre, 2012)
Željko Kipke’s exhibition Police Yard covers two groups of works. The first group includes a set-up of recent series: in the main hall, Predators, filmophile and a bottle of wine (2010); Surveillance Camera (2011-2012) in the eastern wing and Boulevard of Nine Lives (2010-2012) in the western wing of the Pavilion. The second group of works, in the south wing, named Short Guide through the 70s and 80s is a reminder of the processual works and the film documentation that the artist considers an adumbration of his currently dominant interest in film. At the level of meaning, the exhibition refers equally to the manipulative aspects and power of moving pictures and contemporary media and to the fascination that they arouse in political strongmen, all too ready to instrumentalise them for the purposes of their own ideological programmes.
“Researching the networking of (the coinciding) events Kipke practices already for years, while mapping the paralel Reality which develops out of the visible field of real world, thus expressing those results as seemingly out of nowhere in a material world after many years, like underground rivers suddenly breaking out as the entirely new entities, accomplishing productive or dramatic impact on geographically distant places.” (Excerpt from the introduction of a curator Franceschi; translation by MV)
MV
Media-Via 