Dear friends of Museum Lapidarium,
We are pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Anja Ronacher (Vienna, Austria) concentrating on photographs documenting her study visit in Vukovar (Croatia) in July 2017.
Gallery Rigo
Opening: Fr, 29 September 2017, 7.30 pm
The exhibition presents photographs taken by Anja Ronacher in the Vučedol Culture Museum, located on the archaeological site on the right bank of the Danube River, four chilometres downriver from Vukovar. This location was first inhabited in about 6,000 B.C., and the period between 3,350 – 2,300 B.C. was the most intensive one of its existence and it was undoubtedly the most significant European centre. Archaeological excavations to date are able to very precisely reconstruct the daily life and customs of four cultural phenomena which in that time swept through Vučedol. It was a turbulent time of the immigration of the first Indo-Europeans and their relationship with the natives, the blending of material cultures and religions.
The exhibition features Ronacher’s new photographs developed when she returned from Vukovar. It’s a series of images of vessels exposed at Vučedol Culture Museum, “luminous signs of our ancestors, with symbols of the sun and star constellations as seen on the winter sky. But the sun and death cannot be looked at straightly. The vessels are forbearers and witnesses of sacrificial rituals performed during spring equinox. Thus, the question arises, out of the dark, indissolvable, of the ties between Eros and Thanatos. This is Quaternity: To add to light darkness, to the just the unjust, to add to the trinity of god his evil side.”
The title of the Anja’s exhibition “Answer to Job” (“Antwort auf Hiob”, 1952) refers to a book by Carl Gustav Jung and was included in Jung’s “Collected Works”, as part of volume 11. It is regarded as one of Jung’s most controversial works that addresses the moral, mythological and psychological implications of the Book of Job. The exhibition in Gallery Rigo is a prelude to a larger overview of the Vukovar City Museum body of works that will be scheduled in Museum Lapidarium on 20th October.
Therefore, Anja Ronacher s exhibition in Novigrad is a joint project of the Gallery Rigo, Vukovar City Museum and Vučedol Culture Museum, supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum Zagreb. On the other hand, Ronacher’s exhibition in Novigrad is a part of the promotion of the Artist in Residence Kuberton (Anja Ronacher participated in 2016). In partnership with Dr Ursula Krinzinger young artists from Austria and Croatia are invited in Kuberton to research and develop a new version of Krinzinger’s Brno 76 project in Istria.
Photo credits: Cup, 3000 – 2200 BC, Vučedol Museum, Vukovar, Gelatine Silver Print, 31×41,2 cm, 2017, Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger
