Agata Lučić / Mirror without flaws
Solo exhibition
FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION
There are rare women who identify film actresses or magazine models with elegant long legs, lush hair and smooth, flawless faces with the scene they see in the mirror. The young artist Agata Lučić is not one of them, but her works are created precisely as a reaction and criticism to the media saturation of ideal depictions of the female body and the complete influence of the parallel, artificial world on the lived one. In a book of illustrations and a series of graphics in the screen printing technique, the author presents everyday textual and visual notes, in fact creative and humorous associations with the vanity fair made possible by the modern beauty industry and virtual social platforms. The everyday, almost obsessive recording of one's own appearance in the medium of photography, which is practiced by the majority of social network users, is replaced by sketching, recording facial expressions through different moods and situations. The drawings are created in a format reminiscent of Instagram, but as a complete opposite of the processed photographs of the idealized lives of young influencers. The image of herself is made up of a set of her own experiences, cultural environment and level of susceptibility to the offered visions of the body, which often stand in the service of distorted reality and the negation of natural beauty. With works such as the graphic I, Cactus or the cover of the fictional magazine Naturelle, the author reaches the observer in a gentle and humorous way with a clear, direct and simplified approach to the chosen topic. By using expressive, vivid colors in works in which the main stars are women with pimples, small breasts and hairy legs, the artist draws the audience away from shame, hiding and discomfort associated with undesirable aspects of female physicality. With her colorful depictions of the fair sex, Agata Lučić playfully questiones, ridicules and denies contemporary ideals of beauty, while placing an invisible membrane towards the external projections of the desirable female body.
Sara Mikelić
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Agata Lučić was born in 1995. She spent her childhood in Delnice. After graduating from the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb in 2014, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts and completed her undergraduate studies with a Summa Cum Laude commendation. She spent the summer semester of 2018 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp as part of the ERASMUS program. She graduated from the Department of Graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in the class of Prof. Svjetlan Junaković in 2020. She has participated in various projects (Horizon of Freedom, Aestheticization and Rehumanization of Hospital Space: Art for the Purpose of Health, Vizkultura's Posters, etc.), residencies and workshops (CreArt AIR Aveiro, Portugal). She has exhibited at exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, including two solo exhibitions Cirque Ceramic at the Kiosk, SC Gallery, Zagreb, 2020 and Mini Market as part of the CreArt residency at the Museu de Aveiro/Santa Joana, Aveiro, Portugal, 2019. In the 2020 edition of Little Bells, she illustrated the picture book Three Travelers to the Country of Nut by Dorta Jagić, and her comics and illustrations have also been published in other publications (Komikaze, Sketch, School of Walking, Večernji list).
The exhibition is financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb.
The exhibition at the Šira Gallery can be viewed during the Gallery's working hours (Mon-Fri: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., 6 p.m. – 8 p.m., Saturdays: 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.) until November 3, 2020.