Andrej Drožđan / Memory Connection
Solo exhibition
FROM THE PREFACE OF THE EXHIBITION
In his graduate thesis "Connection Memory", Andrej Drožđan deals with connecting his own and other people's memories using content from everyday life that he encounters in online and offline forms on various locations or internet platforms. Andrej uses the words connection and memory in the title because, in addition to suggesting the connection of memories, they have a meaning that is widely used in the digital sense – internet connections and computer or cloud memory. Between the found and his own objects or memories, the artist creates links using the methods of translation, coincidence or association. The entire process of collecting ends in the form of an audiovisual installation through which he indirectly communicates the topics of childhood, fascination with Internet culture, nostalgia, reality, banality, artificial intelligence and social networks. With this installation, he transforms the gallery space into a temporary container for storing information that is born from each other and thus branches throughout the space. In addition to the made and ready-made objects, the artist includes in the installation an audio work composed of sentences taken from internet articles, pop-up advertisements, but mostly from the status of random people on Twitter or Instagram. Andrej creates a collage of different arbitrary ways of thinking about a similar topic and dynamics that mimic the structure of the Internet and navigating it. The result seems intimate, sentimental, melancholic and melancholic at the same time, because no matter how random or seemingly unrelated these thoughts are within them, there are encoded memories that take the mind to several different places at the same time.
(taken from the diploma thesis)
Andrej Drožđan
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Andrej Drožđan (Zagreb, 1997) is a visual artist who uses the medium of illustration, photography, installation and graphic design within his work. He explores the concept and aesthetics of the everyday, the coexistence of colors, shapes and materials through the simple, contemporary and nostalgic within the digital. In 2022, he completed his graduate studies in New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb with the graduate thesis "Memory Connection" under the mentorship of prof.art. Ivan Slipčević.
The exhibition was realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Media and the City Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb.
You can see the exhibition in the Šira Gallery during the working hours of the Gallery (Mon-Fri: 9-16 h, 18-20 h, Saturdays: 11-16 h) until 18.03.2023.