The exhibition Make a Wish continues to present artists from Rijeka’s art scene who came of age in the nineties and found more stimulating working conditions abroad. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Ukić attended the Academy in Düsseldorf (2000-2004), where he remained, with occasional activities on the local scene, primarily in Zagreb, Split and Rijeka.

The current exhibition features new large-scale works of demanding production, developed in dialogue with space and indirectly pointing to the building’s history and its repurposing from industrial use to a museum. In addition to smaller-scale wall art, the exhibition is based on objects between sculptural pieces and architecture, with an interest in the research of materials as a significant starting point, yet with new preoccupations and focal points. Whilst before he regarded matter as an independent component of his work, partly tamed in a random form it provides, now it immerses us into a physical experience of space where the visitor’s body becomes an important component. The exhibition itself takes the form of a stage and a visitor takes part with their own presence, in a dilemma before Ukić’s ambiguous objects which belong to the world of both everyday life and fiction, to both the familiar and the abhorrent (Make a Wish!)

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EXHIBITION VIEWS

All photographs’ credits: Hrvoje Franjić
© Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka
© Nikola Ukić