Ivan Ladislav Galeta: “Point Zero Landscape”

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb will launch its autumn programme with a large retrospective exhibition of the oeuvre of Ivan Ladislav Galeta: one of the most important contemporary Central European media artists, who holds a cult status in the world of film and video art. His works will be on show to the public until November 17th. (more...)

After an artistic career that has spanned decades and numerous art projects that have won him the status of a cult Central European media artist, Ivan Ladislav Galeta presents his first large retrospective. The exhibition, entitled “Point Zero Landscape – Experiments and Research”, has been organized at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. Until November 17th, visitors will be able to enjoy modern works dating back to 1968. The exhibition itself is a conceptual project to which admirers of this artist are already accustomed. Although the artist himself calls this exhibition a work-in-progress, its official title reveals the most important thing that the exhibition aims to achieve: to provide an integral presentation not only of the artist's works but also of his experimental research in the fields of photography, film, television and video; in addition to, as of recently, the possibilities of the internet, for which he has received coveted awards from European and overseas media art circles.

The exhibition will show his numerous experimental works, covering the time span from1968 and his first film “Metanoia” to a kind of reconstruction of his first exhibition “Movement” held in 1974, and a series of film scenarios and unavoidable masterpieces of experimental film, such as “Two Timelines in a Single Space” (1976-1984), “PiRâMídas 1972-1984” (1984), “sfaĩra 1985-1895” (1984), “Water Pulu 1869-1896” (1987/88), “Wal(l)zen” (1989) and “End Art”. Since the medium of film is the artist’s forte, his films also form the cornerstones of this retrospective exhibition. However, visitors will also gain a valuable insight into yet another important element of Galeta's oeuvre: his lecture performances as well as his very specific philosophy of art and life, unconditionally harmonious with nature.

Ivan Ladislav Galeta was born in 1947. He obtained a degree in Visual Arts from the Teacher's Academy in Zagreb in 1967, as well as a degree in Pedagogy from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb in 1981. He headed the Multimedia Centre of the Students' Centre in Zagreb (1997-1990), and he founded and headed the Art Cinema Centre of the Filmoteka 16 (1991-1994). Since 1980, he has been invited as a guest lecturer to several European universities. Since 1993, he has been working as a media specialist at Zagreb's Fine Arts Academy where he initiated the introduction of Animation Studies and New Media Studies; in the meantime, the two have developed into an Academy Department for Animated Film and New Media.

He has received numerous awards for his films, installations and various projects in Paris, Oberhausen, Belgrade, Trieste, Novi Sad, including a high order of the French Ministry of Culture and Communications, which he received in 1999. He has exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions all over the world while his works have been included in important local and international contemporary art collections and film archives, including: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatian Film Club's Association, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, and Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris.