Bogdan Borčić & Tihomir Pinter: In Dialogue

As part of the 18th exhibition in the Graphic Cabinet of Bogdan Borčić, the works of painter and graphic artist Bogdan Borčić and photographer Tihomir Pinter will be put into dialogue, communicating from the point of view of historical perspective and the Zeitgeist, without regard to the use of different artistic media. In their more or less schematic works, both artists depicted the experience of modern world and changes in the cultural landscape through visual means. Just as Pinter photographed the details of industrial structures, Borčić depicted them in a stylised manner.

Borčić’s and Pinter’s prints were often made in the same place and time, simultaneously, but without direct mutual influence. Nevertheless, some of the works are quite similar in their motifs and appearances, which testifies above all to the Zeitgeist of the second half of the 20th century and 21st century, when the world in which both lived and worked has changed radically, becoming ever more urbanised and industrialised. Just as Pinter sought for harbingers of the modern period in his photographic works, Borčić often depicted this same world in schematic prints and paintings. The straight lines, functionalism and symmetries that can only be created by humans with the help of a machine undoubtedly marked a world that in the post-war decades still believed in the overall progress of society as a whole. In a way, Pinter’s photographs are an indication that Borčić’s work did not emerge from a vacuum, but from the indirect impulses of the outside world.

The exhibition juxtaposes works by the two artists from different periods: 17 prints by Borčić from the period 1960-2009 and 21 photographs by Pinter from the period 1966-2023. The series of dialogical exhibitions in the Graphic Cabinet of Bogdan Borčić, where Galerija Božidar Jakac keeps 1,072 of his graphic works and 371 drawings and sketches in its collection, is thus continuing. Therefore, in the coming years we will continue to juxtapose the works of Bogdan Borčić with the artistic practices of other artists as part of the exhibition series In Dialogue.

Curator: Miha Colner