The Republic of Croatia is proud to present David Maljkovic’s Lost Memories from These Days at this year’s Biennale di Venezia, selected by Zeljko Kipke, organised by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka and curated by Branko Franceschi. Lost Memories from These Days will be set up in an installation consisting of video, sound and a spatial structure, taking over the highly finished ambient of Carlo Scarpa’s ground floor at Palazzo Querini Stampalia.

Lost Memories from These Days belongs to a group of works created between 2003 and 2006 including the renowned Again for Tomorrow and Scene for New Heritage which always involved various media like collages, video and drawings. Maljkovic’s entire oeuvre of this period poses questions about the existence of vision and insists on the enlightening quality of art in opposition to the present-day tendency to dismiss relevant historical achievements, like the visionary concepts of late modernism. Moreover, it is a personal quest for the meaning of art, an unbiased search for the mysterious, elusive, lost beauty of creation, an escapist flight to a realm of the future. The works evolve around the emblematic architecture of the Memorial Centre for a Partisan Hospital designed by Vojin Bakic in 1981, and Giuseppe Sambito’s Italian Pavilion for the Zagreb Fairgrounds dating from 1962. For Maljkovic, the expressive monumentality and distinct style of these buildings give them a status which surpasses mere representation of mannerisms in late modernism. Instead, they are perceived as time capsules, spaces so intensively charged by their own era, that they become means of transfer for spiritual heritage relevant to both present and future.

David Maljkovic (b.1973) lives and works in Zagreb and Berlin and is one of the most sought after artists of his generation. Recent solo exhibition include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka; Centre de Creation Contemporain, Tours; Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.

Upcoming solo exhibitions in 2007: P.S.1 New York, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; CAPC Musee d' Art Contemporain, Bordeaux and Kunstverein Hamburg.

Selected Group Exhibitions include: Magellanic Cloud, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Ideal City – Invisible Cities, Zamosc & Potsdam; Downloads from Future, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; Mercury in Retrograde, De Appel, Amsterdam; Busan Biennale; Again for Tomorrow, Royal College of Art, London; Go InsideTirana Biennial 3; The Imaginary Number, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and 9. Istanbul Biennale.



_____________________________
www.mmsu.hr/maljkovic