Transformations of Memory

Patricia Počanić

The exploration of media, techniques, and themes such as the relationship between nature, technology, and humanity, as well as history and memory, lies at the core of Zdenko Krtić’s artistic practice. The exhibition Enrosadira unites a retrospective overview of the artist’s work with a focus on recent pieces, in which he presents a unique artistic system – one that relies on the manual preparation of pigments, diverse techniques and processes, traditional painting and drawing methods, and contemporary digital technologies to emphasize the creative process itself. Although Krtić expresses himself through a wide array of media and techniques (graphite drawing, India ink, gouache, watercolor, encaustic, printmaking, laser-cut prints, ceramics, photography, scanography, painting by hand, gestural mark-making, and digital image transmitting), he often uses hand-made pigments from organic and inorganic substances, plants, and minerals, as well as wax – all sourced or created in the surroundings of his home and the natural landscapes of Alabama. Through these materials and methods, Krtić continuously explores recurring concepts, approaching and interpreting them through his distinct artistic vision. This same approach extends to his exhibitions, in which he creates site- specific installations – such as this one at the Zuccato Gallery – by collaging new and older works, shaping spatial arrangements, and engaging in dialogue with the surroundings. Enrosadira, the exhibition marking the artist’s first major presentation in Croatia after nearly forty years, thus becomes an artwork itself, with each individual piece serving as a guide to understanding the artistic world of Zdenko Krtić.

To present his multi- and intermedial practice, the artist exhibits artworks organized into three sections that follow the spatial layout of the Zuccato Gallery. On the ground floor, the installation Unsent Letters is on display, in which the artist combines printmaking, graphite drawing, watercolor, and India ink within the format of oversized envelopes mounted on the wall. Arranged in a specific configuration – horizontally, vertically, and grouped in clusters – these elements form a kind of chronotopic timeline. The visual narrative unfolds both diachronically and synchronically, and the letters exhibited here represent only one variation of an installation the artist continuously alters and expands depending on the exhibition space. These works reflect the history and the present of human-shaped environments immersed in natural surroundings. Krtić depicts industrial landscapes, factories, machines, and other motifs interwoven with photographs and images of migrants, workers, and tourists. The letters are treated using various techniques and processes – washed with black walnut ink, painted with hand-prepared colors and mineral pigments

such as indigo, oxide, and apatite, and engraved using a laser cutter. The resulting works are marked simultaneously by contemporary technology – etched with laser beams – and by conscious and unconscious manual interventions: gestures and accidental stains that seem to form abstract landscapes. In this way, Krtić merges the old with the new in both the creation and iconography of his works, while the exhibited letters communicate a message about leaving a trace behind – both on the material medium and on the conceptual level. Additionally, an installation titled Hosts is also presented on the ground floor. In it, fragments of industrial landscapes, nature, and personal moments are displayed inside Petri dishes, grouped into clusters on pedestals. These vessels contain older drawings, original and found photographs, treated with various techniques, in which the artist cultivates personal and artistic ideas – creating a kind of repository of his inner and artistic self.

The installation on the first floor, Losing the Ground Beneath Our Feet, consists of artworks on paper created using encaustic painting, cold wax, and watercolor, all grounded in drawing as the primary medium. The inspiration and themes of these paintings and drawings stem from the analysis of found and personal photographs depicting historical and forgotten disasters and events; industrial landscapes with abandoned machinery and obsolete technologies; human activities and achievements, architectural elements, and urban grids interwoven with representations of nature, introspective motifs, art historical references, and expressive social scenes. This thematic ensemble reflects a synchronic understanding of time – a dynamic view of history through which the artist reminds the viewer of past events and technologies, while simultaneously prompting reflection on the contemporary moment. In order to articulate these themes and processes artistically, Krtić uses drawing and photography as the foundation of his exploration. The artist’s return to and the continual investigation of drawing represents a direct transmission of thought, emotion, and memory onto the surface, while the choice of medium and the treatment of the drawing's support carry both formal and symbolic meaning. In the work Zeppelin / Losing the Ground, this conceptual and technological framework is linked with gestural mark-making – traces and imprints, seemingly random stains in wax left behind by the artist. These works are thus rooted both in reality and recognizable imagery, as well as in the metaphorical imprint of human presence, expressed through abstracted forms achieved by surface manipulation. Krtić thus blurs the clarity of motifs, creating a veil-like effect – a translucent layer resulting from the transformation of photographs and/or the intervention with wax. This technique establishes a soft distance between the viewer and the subject, which, on a symbolic level, lends a historical dimension to the work, transposing the viewer into a moment in the past.

On the top floor of the gallery, Krtić develops his enrosadira – a fleeting chromatic and optical phenomenon, metaphorically captured in the mural Playing with Ashes, composed of around twenty scannographs (scanner photographs), along with other exhibited works. The artist begins the creation of these pieces by producing digital images of various three- dimensional objects, which he then “processes analogically” through methods such as painting, erasing parts, and introducing accidental fragments (such as fingerprints) during the preparation of his own wax and pigments. Whilst relying on contemporary techniques, Krtić deliberately avoids the use of a camera. Instead, by placing objects directly onto the image-sensitive surface of a flatbed scanner, he generates a direct visual impression of the object – one formed without a (camera) lens. This technique emphasizes detail, structure, and texture, producing various light effects in the process. By choosing this specific method, the artist aims to analyze the act of observing, recording, and translating stimuli, phenomena, and material states into works of art. He depicts water surfaces, air currents, the phenomenon of afterglow, reflections, and twilight – intertwined with motifs of plants, turbines, aircraft, and other devices. Subjects of his scannographs also include (self)portraits, interior spaces with personal significance such as studios or intimate living quarters, scenes from forgotten photographs, laboratory instruments, and selected artifacts whose symbolism evokes memento mori. In these works, Krtić draws on both the formal and symbolic potential of the motif. Transformations of matter, light phenomena, and representations of (un)cultivated nature serve as metaphors for the life cycle, while the exhibited (self)portraits – both of faces and interiors – reflect emotional states and act as markers of change. These themes are further developed through visual interventions (drawing, use of hot and cold wax) and the collage of photographs, resulting in a specific structure and texture. Through this literal and figurative layering, Krtić once again constructs a porous boundary between the painter’s reality and the real world. What emerges is a distance between the image and the viewer; through distortion and the loss of sharpness, he creates depictions that resemble historical documents infused with (the artist’s) nostalgia. This is further emphasized by the recycling of old photographs – that is, the appropriation of other people’s stories, which, when exhibited in a new artistic context, generate new narratives and emotions. By using both his own and found photographs, Krtić captures multiple perspectives within a single work. The result of these formal and symbolic juxtapositions is a displaced perspective and a subtly uneasy, nocturnal, and dreamlike atmosphere.

The media and technical experiments, formal research, as well as iconography presented in Zdenko Krtić’s exhibition collectively point to the multilayered significance of his artistic oeuvre. As viewers, we recognize intimate themes – those of technological and environmental decay, the magic of nature and its transformation. Yet, the overarching narrative of the artist’s work remains a dialogue with time. Through his works, Krtić continually emphasizes the complexity and fluidity of history, the interwoven nature of collective memory and subjective recollection, which together speak to historical experience and the contemporary moment. By formally and conceptually rendering liminal spaces (through the use of both traditional and contemporary techniques, the preparation of pigment and wax, the “recycling” of photographs and stories, veils of transparency, unease, pain, beauty, decadence, and renewal) he blurs the line between intimate reflection and collective past. His works become chronicles of human presence, personal confessions, (devastated) places, and archaic technology. They echo past and familiar experiences, but when placed in a new context, they give rise to new interpretations, unveiling layers of meaning previously unnoticed. He cautions that without consciously recognizing past events and mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. In this way, Krtić – through a complex artistic vision – seeks to evoke the (im)possibility of grasping the totality of temporal experience.

Centuries ago, the philosopher Aristotle unwittingly outlined the workings of the modern camera when he described the near-magical effect from a solar eclipse: the openings between leaves on a tree – natural apertures – gathered the diffuse light from the sky above and focused it on the ground as animated, indirect images that revealed the Moon passing before the Sun.

Zdenko Krtić’s large-scale, photo-based prints similarly filter and project the environments around him: from the intimate spaces of family, home, and studio to the built environments of the city or the expansiveness of the natural world. Some works depict moments captured almost surreptitiously with the camera: views out a glass window, between the holes of a fence, or through a veil of linen. Others document changing faces or the growth of a garden, themes and variations tied to memory and history. Still others are shot as chance encounters that emerge suddenly from the flow of life. The camera becomes a means of studying the world.

But Krtić is first and foremost a painter, and in the tradition of artists who synthesize photography and painting strategies– from realists like Richard Estes to conceptualists like Gerhard Richter – his photographs are catalysts not only for grasping the visual environment but serve as foundations for gradually revealing its essence. He prints then rephotographs initial captures, sometimes merging the results with other images or processing them into surreal, painterly, even abstract transformations. Translucent wax painted over the results finally returns a mist of materiality to the camera’s flat image. A series of tondo paintings, round details “cored” from the large prints, further rematerialize the images through a buildup of visceral layers of wax, resin, and pigment on wood.

In a complicated reversal, Krtić’s revelations – about the ubiquity of looking and being looked at, about navigating distraction and surveillance, about seeking stability as we move through a sped-up and unsure world – are produced not by peeling back layers to expose something naked and raw. Instead, he illuminates our conditions through indirect or obscure perspectives, shifting transformations, and meaningful accumulations of processes and materials. Ultimately, the works invite us to participate in the artist’s ever-evolving efforts to understand the phenomena of life, not always by looking at them directly but seeing them through hazy and obscured specters of light and shadow.

Kathryn M. Floyd, Ph. D.

Kathryn Floyd is Associate Professor of Art History at Auburn University where she teaches and researches in the areas of modern and contemporary art and the history of photography.

The original title of this exhibition, Unsent Letters, was Found in Translation. It’s by no small coincidence that this exhibit should have been called in this way. Like letters, translation suggests a direction of travel. In the same way letter writing implies a sense of movement – sending a message from Destination A to Destination B – translation, too, is a process that involves moving a language or artistic work from one culture to another. Translation, however, is never a straightforward process of replacing Language A with Language B. Instead, translation is a dynamic activity which requires multiple forms of negotiation, mediation, and manipulation. Translation needs to reflect the norms and conventions that emerge in different cultural moments and so to achieve this, translation requires an element of change: this means intervening in the process in order to re-create and re-fashion the language to suit the target culture.

But, of course, this exhibition is devoted to unsent letters: the letters which never reached their destination. Similarly, translation throws up a series of questions not just about what travels into the target culture, but also what does not. Take, for instance, the narrative works of the Sicilian author, Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936). Despite winning a Nobel Prize for literature, there are very few translations of his narratives in the Anglophone world to date. Why? Arguably because his narratives don’t travel well. While children’s fiction, especially Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (1883), have received endless retellings, Pirandello’s narrative fiction has not. As is widely acknowledged, Pirandello’s narratives are very difficult to translate into English. His phrases tend to be long and wordy, and his philosophical style of writing, full or nuances, ambiguities, and idiosyncrasies, are not easily translatable, ultimately affecting his circulation and reception into today’s literary canon.  

Therefore, the primary task of any translator, like a letter writer, is to build a bridge from their own culture to another. I would say that a lot of this bridge is built owing to the invisible agents involved in the process. Letter writing does not just involve the writer and the recipient, but a variety of individuals or ‘agents’: the paper manufacturers, the ink suppliers, the postal services. And so is the case with translation – there is a network of agents responsible for mediating translation processes behind-the-scenes: the editors, publishers, critics, directors, etc. As I have argued elsewhere with Cristina Marinetti, in a rapidly changing socio-political landscape, where the politics faced by travelling peoples are as difficult now as ever, drawing attention to the forgotten-about individuals responsible for processes of cultural transmission, and raising the visibility of the hidden labor involved in such processes, this will work towards affirming the capacity for translation – like letter writing – to forge intercultural contact and exchange, and ultimately build closer relationships and clearer communications.

To conclude with the words of Susan Bassnett, studying translation is important because it reminds us of the meaning of ‘origin’ and ‘originality’, and because it makes us reflect about the multiple meanings of reality. There is no such thing as ‘sameness’ across language. Translation is highly individualistic and always involves one person’s reading of something else: there are so many versions of a text and many different translations which can come from a text. The study of translation is therefore vital in shedding light on the circulation of texts and ideas. This is hugely important in a world where travel and the movement of people is so significant today. When things move, they are transformed – they are brought forward. To finish with the words of David Johnston, translation involves the act of writing forward: that is, developing a relationship with the past which allows pastness to be protected and brought to a new life. I hope that, with this exhibition, we can be inspired to question notions like ‘origins’ and ‘originality’; travel and transformation; and think about the relationship between pastness, same-ness, and new-ness in relation to the act of writing forward, just like in letter writing.

The exhibition essay written by Enza De Francisci, Ph. D., University of Glasgow