On the swell of the waves, the sunlight breaks up into countless nuggets of gold. A yellow submarine dives beneath the surface and slowly descends into the depths, where the clear blue water gradually grows darker, colder and stiller. As your eyes become accustomed to the darkness, you discern deep shades of blue that are as mesmerizing as the sparkle of the gold above, while muted sounds find your ears. Welcome in Katarina Juričić’s space-filling underwater installation at Galerie Bart.
Katarina Juričić (b. 1994 Zagreb, Croatia) spent entire summers on an island off the Croatian coast. ‘During those months I had a different mindset. When you’re away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, you have time to contemplate, while all that you see is sun and sea.’ The sun was the subject matter of the photo series ‘Orange and Blue’, her graduation project in 2019. Now she is focusing on the sea. ‘The light, the colours… the sea has always fascinated me. Under water, we lose our typical human characteristics; you can’t breathe or walk there. You have to adjust in order to move forward.’
The sea is a domain about which we still know relatively little, even though oceans span the entire earth and link the continents. The mystery of the sea has exerted a great attraction on us throughout the ages, from the beauty of the setting sun in the water to the fear that a wildly swirling sea under a thundery sky instils in us. ‘I’m not the only one who is fascinated by this natural phenomenon. With my work, I like to call into question the clichéd images we know of it, while on the other hand I emphasize its mystery. The resulting minimalist images play with the perception of the viewer, who wonders: What is real and what isn’t?’