The Museum of Contemporary Art: Disaster of the Unseen, Exhibition of Paintings by Radenko Milak

In November the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Zagreb presents an exhibition by Radenko Milak, a prominent painter of the modern generation whose work has dazzled visitors of prestigious world museums and galleries.

The Disaster of the Unseen is the title of the most recent exhibition by Radenko Milak, an artist from Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina) whose artwork can be seen in prestigious world museums and galleries. In 2017 he represented his country at the 58^th Biennale in Venice with the project Universe of Disaster.

The exhibition takes place in Zagreb’s Museum of Contemporary Art until 29^th November this year. 

Radenko Milak has intrigued the world museum and gallery scene with his fascinating black and white watercolours whose motifs are mainly taken from the world of documentary photography, from on-line archives, social media and web portals. However, this does not involve mere copying of the downloaded photographs or some other media; he also uses a poetic procedure of repetition, repeated presentation of forgotten or supressed reality, which gives his artwork a powerful and authentic message. This earned him a unique place on the world contemporary art scene, also conveying deeply felt emotions to the viewers.

Frequent motifs in his paintings are large disasters in the world, wars, global environmental crisis, ground-breaking social and cultural events. His oeuvre covers recent past events but also turbulent present time. The exhibition in Zagreb presents art pieces linked to the refugee and migrant crisis, climate change, history of economic and racial inequality, the society’s obsession with supervision and control all the way to the current crisis linked to the COVID -19 pandemic. The exhibition in Zagreb presents several large composite pieces and animated films made based on frames from existing film documents and live-action films.

The exhibition Art Works! is also available until 8^th November in the Open gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was created as part of the international interdisciplinary project Art Works! European Culture of Resistance and Liberation which connects the fields of youth education based on art, culture and history and politics. During summer, the exhibition was shown in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MUSEION in Bolzano (Italy). After Zagreb it will be available at the Museum Erlauf Erinnert in Austria and it is scheduled to open in Berlin at the beginning of 2021.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb has more than 12 000 art pieces of Croatian or foreign artists in its collections. The Museum was established in 1954. As of 2009 it is located in a new building which is one of the symbols of the Novi Zagreb city district, situated to the south of the Sava river.