galerie michaela stock

At the booth of galerie michaela stock the Croatian New Media artist Sandro Đukić deals with the changing relationships of media such as photography and video, but also with computer-controlled mechanisms. Language as Ideology is a multimedia work – the installation including the digital archive on history of mining generated by computer algorithm, the video Daydream and a a large-format photograph from the Ironfactory Sisak – dealing with the issue of time, that is, duration and the transience of socio-historical phenomenon. Installation “arch_0001_276 / GAME OVER – wish to reconsider reality?” from 2021 is based on 10 years research on workers and miners heritage from town Labin in Istria. As a part of long term project Sandro Đukić was leading digitalization of documents and periodic for beginning of the 20 century until nowadays. Finally, over 9000 pages where processed with OCR software and text was split in six groups; from early period 1900 to 1920, telegraph correspondence between miners office in Labin and head office in Vienna – company managing strike breaks, rising after WW II optimism and glorifying productivity until collapse of socialism, until transitional period of nowadays. All text was subject of “text mining”, text analyzing procedure, based on Noam Chomsky theory, and it was created lexicon / dictionary for each period. Using that dictionary, generated by computer algorithm, the text was produced. Despite sometime strange construction, one can with ease recognize the period as well as economy, culture as well as language as tool of ideology of the specific time. Finally, all that text, over 6000 sentences, become content of the Artist Books and prints as part of the installation.

The Croatian New Media artist, Sandro Đukić studied with the video art pioneers Nam June Paik and Nan Hoover. Being a New Media artist, he not only deals with the changing relationships of media such as photography and video, but also with computer-controlled mechanisms like saving, documenting and data storage of reality, which are subject to the process of photography and disclosure by the media. He swiftly changes between the aforementioned media – from spatial, architectonic and photographic installations and constructed films and, at the same time, creates several levels of meaning as concerns space. Consequently, he sees himself as a virtual-visual artist, tending to a critical interpretation of space and the beginning of creating a work of art. For the past 20 years, he has dedicated himself to the re-search in/of archives and the multimedia presentation thereof.

galerie michaela stock The gallery has a strong focus on Central and Eastern European art, especially contemporary Croatian artists and supports performance art, from 2015-19 the gallery organised a yearly performance event. During COVID-19 Michaela Stock launched SALON REAL / VIRTUAL, a new gallery concept: real vs virtual. The focus is on a new perception of the exhibition space and the artwork displayed. The goal is to dock the real world more strongly and actively at the interface to the virtual world. The gallery owner Michaela Stock juxtaposes the classic white cube with the concept of the gallery as a forum for discussions about a virtually staged exhibition and at the same time questions it.