Reviewed by Dr. Ianthe Small
There’s something gently subversive about holding a contemporary group exhibition in a town that appears, at first glance, to contain more storks than artists. And yet here, in the quietly cobbled town of Ludberg—“the geographical centre of Croatia,” as the locals remind you with a certain pointed pride—an ambitious and impressively coherent group show has emerged, a exciting murmuration of ideas adding to the deep history of Croatian fine artists.
Titled A Certain Light, the exhibition gathers nine artists from across the region (and one inexplicably from Dundee) in a former textile warehouse that now functions as the town’s cultural centre, badminton court, and, food festival venue. The show is loosely themed around light—as metaphor and medium —and curated with an understated East European confidence.
One enters through a low arch, past a disarmingly large sculpture by Ivana Vrček: a chandelier made entirely from shattered rear-view mirrors, titled Memory is reversible in theory, but in practice it’s not so easy. Hung just slightly too low for comfort, it sets the tone—confrontational, yes, but perfumed with humour and a wink toward Balkan nostalgia.
Hrvoje Blagojević’s video installation Sun Over Lidl Car Park, Osijek runs on an ageing television mounted atop a tower of bricks, as though awaiting demolition. The piece documents the shifting light on a supermarket roof over the course of a single day. It’s meditative, yes, but also lightly mocking—especially when paired with a soundscape that includes gently looped announcements from the self-checkout machine and a dog barking in precise three-four time.
More tactile is Thread Horizon by Marina Mesić, a wall-length textile piece stitched from discarded school uniforms and fishing net. From a distance, it resembles an abstract coastal landscape; up close, it becomes a palimpsest of childhood, domestic labour, using the precise shade of teal that featured in soviet swimming pools and associated with every soviet child’s state-sponsored swimming lessons. One viewer described it to me as “beautiful and slightly itchy, like my grandmother’s love.”
Several works show a shared distrust of traditional media. Tea Novak’s contribution is simply a lightbulb hanging over a bowl of plum jam, left to ferment throughout the exhibition. Viewers are invited to write down how the light made them feel and drop the notes into the jam. As a performance piece it lacked something, but over time it became my favourite piece.
But the show’s quiet triumph is its collective tone. There is no shrill moralising here, no shouty placards or over-processed trauma. Instead, these works whisper, suggest, imply, and often smirk. It’s a show that understands its place—both geographically and psychically—on the edge of something. The artists seem aware of the northern light, of history’s long shadow, and of the small daily absurdities of provincial life.
Is it a show that will rewrite the map of European contemporary art? No. But that’s rather the point. A Certain Light proves you can be both provincial and perceptive, local and lucid. In a time when major cities are choked with oversubscribed fairs and algorithms disguised as aesthetics, Ludberg’s modest warehouse hums with actual thinking.