Last month, the MKC Gallery of the Split Youth Center opened the exhibition The Blossoms of the Beast / ‘Cvat zvijeri’ by multimedia artist Dario Šolman. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and completed his postgraduate studies at Ohio State University in the USA. Šolman has received several scholarships and awards, and his works lie at the intersection of drawing, video, and spatial installation
In his new work, Šolman combines image, sound, and text into a stylized narrative between the past and the future, reality and dream. Inspired by an ancient ceremonial performance, the artist evokes mythology and the collective anxiety of the contemporary moment through a multimedia installation.
The starting point of the work is the Japanese theater form Noh and the play Seiobo, in which the sensory experience of the viewer is at the center of the experience. Šolman’s interpretation shifts this framework from the mythical to the post-apocalyptic: the celebration of the divine is transformed into a vision of the end of civilization. Through a combination of real footage of Split, the Youth Center, computer drawings, and scenes of rocket launches, the artist builds a temporal and spatial labyrinth that questions the belief in linear progress and announces the closing of the cycle of Western civilization.
The exhibition is curated by Jasna Gluić, and the exhibition can be viewed at the Youth Center until November 8, 2025.
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