Vanja Babić: Bread from yesterday

"We approach the shelf as a screen that outgrows us in volume. In front of the wall of goods where we feel the accumulated abundance, the three-dimensional perspective ceases to work, and the importance of point viewing increases." Roch Sulima – Anthropology of Everyday Life Last year, a law was introduced in Croatia that exempts donated food from VAT, which aimed to reduce the amount of wasted food and encourage the donation of surplus food. Excess healthy food ... Read More

"We approach the shelf as a screen that surpasses us in volume. In front of the wall of goods, where we feel the accumulated abundance, the three-dimensional perspective ceases to work, and the importance of point viewing increases."

Roch Sulima – Anthropology of Everyday Life

Last year, a law was introduced in Croatia that exempts donated food from VAT, which aimed to reduce the amount of wasted food and encourage the donation of surplus food. In this sense, surplus healthy food should be further distributed where it is needed and at the same time raise awareness of personal and collective habits related to food consumption on a daily basis.
The exhibition Bread from Yesterday by Vanja Babić examines the perception of bread as an everyday consumer on several levels. Mass bakery chains are repeatedly serving instant products, introducing new flavors, offering daily promotions, and customers are gradually turning into increasingly spoiled and picky consumers. Bread is becoming an easily replaceable and easily discarded commodity. While smaller bakeries sell stale bread (from yesterday) for only a few kunas, this is not possible in larger bakery chains. Most bakers, however, primarily want to construct an image of freshly baked bread coming out of hot ovens with customers, and it is with them that this image can be consumed immediately. In such a highly aestheticized, bakery world, old bread is difficult to modify and package into a desirable product.
The views of passers-by, in whose plastic bags you can see the outlines of the breads just bought, stand in contrast to the photograph of a garbage dump where a large amount of unusable bread is unloaded. A large transparent bag is also filled with unattractive bread that the artist bought in a local bakery the day after that bread adorned the bakery windows. In fact, it is difficult to distinguish the difference between the discarded bread in that bag and the one we would buy in a store or bakery. The difference lies in the relationship between the monetary value and the equivalent amount of edible bread. A large bag of 15 kg of bread from yesterday has the same price as a small plastic bag with only a few small pastries.
The artist provokes us to revise the everyday perception and consumption of bread and, in a broader sense, our own seemingly naturalized consumption habits.

Lea Vene

BIOGRAPHY

Vanja Babić was born in 1984 in Zagreb. He graduated in 2013 in New Media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb with Magna Cum Laude.
He presented his first monastery exhibition There Are Them in Trams, accompanied by numerous artistic actions in the city, in 2012 at the SC Gallery; the second, Transformation 1250, in 2014 at the Prozori Gallery, and the third of the same name in 2016 at the Green Room Gallery in Zabok. He has also presented himself as part of the Open Studio project at the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery and at numerous group exhibitions: 31. Youth Salon, HDLU, Zagreb (2012); 48th Zagreb Salon, HDLU, Zagreb (2013); Drava Art Biennale, Zagreb (2013); Essl Art Award, ESSL Museum, Vienna/Klosterneuburg (2013); Erste Fragments, Zagreb (2015); Image of Sound, Zagreb (2016).
He has received several recognitions and awards for his work, the most important of which is the Essl Art Award in 2013.

Contact: vanjinmejl@gmail.com