Darko Škrobonja / diary C-41
The photographs exhibited at Salon Galić are a result of long-lasting artistic research by their author, photographer and video artist Darko Škrobonja. His artistic research is based on spontaneous and aimless strolls on routes whose selection is partly incidental and partly derives from the artist’s lifelong experience of the city. These elusive wanderings gain their sense only through the search for motifs that make them just what they are and by examining the ways of recording them.
In this respect, we can look at the artist as a practitioner of everyday life in its original form, as defined by Michel de Certeau in Invention of Everyday Life[1]. The invention of Škrobonja’s everyday life – unsettled, unpredictable and spontaneous walks – takes place far from the imposed urban settings, firmly structured and dominant social and economic trends. As such, the artist’s wandering is resisting the governing structures, so the question is raised as to what the artist is specifically opposing. One of the possible answers (and there are certainly more arising) can certainly be read in the artist’s personal experience of professional work in tourism. There, the artist, while utilitarianly contributing to the tourism industry, is faced with a picture of the city, a destination city, a picture that does not correspond to his life experience in the same city. These seemingly aimless walks can be viewed as a vacation, resistance, break, and / or skulking, and the quest for the motives of a local and authentic city becomes the reflection of the artist’s desire to legitimize his own living space, the space of a living city.
But – the instantaneity and non-existence are the features of practices of everyday invention, so the photos that record them are no more than just their traces, a multitude of visible details that keep the practices behind them invisible. And this is where this research goes into exploring the formal elements of the photo media. In his walks, capturing the motifs / traces with an analog color film of medium formats, the artist turns to the research of light, color, texture and composition. These elements prevailed in selecting photos for the exhibition as well as creating a narrative that connects the works in the gallery.
Yet this turning into the formality of the media itself should not distract us from the initial idea of this artistic research. Stephen Johnstone, writing about everyday life in contemporary art, describes it as a place where ordinary people, day after day, creatively use and transform the world they encounter[2]. Thus the authenticity and the democracy that this author attributes to everyday life should be also attributed to this work in which Škrobonja releases the city from its drop scenes and glamour, from false representation, and which (through photographs of traces of its everyday practices) reveals both the ease and weight of life inside the city.
[1] Michel de Certeau, Invencija svakodnevice, Naklada MD, Zagreb 2002.
[2] Stephen Johnstone, Recent Art and the Everyday, The Everyday, Whitechapel Gallery, The MIT Press, London/Cambridge (MA) 2008.
Darko Škrobonja was born in 1986 in Split. In 2005 he graduated from II. Gymnasium Split. In 2010 he graduated from the Cine Club Split, after which he enrolled in the Arts Academy in Split (Film and Video). In 2012 he attended the German HBK Braunschweig as an Erasmus scholar and successfully passed the summer semester in the class of prof. Corinne Schnitt and prof. Candice Breitz. In 2013 he became a Bachelor of Arts and Video, and in 2016 he graduated from the UMAS graduate studies of Media Arts. During his studies he worked as a cameraman and director of photography for many student and several professional projects. As a student, he has exhibited at several group exhibitions in Croatia and Germany, among which is the 38th Split Salon (with “Baba”) in 2015. That same year (under the mentorship of prof. Mirko Pivčević), he had his first independent photo exhibition, “Nasip”, in the Bez Naziva gallery, as well as another solo exhibit “Miro” in the Museum of Fine Arts in Split, as part of the Fast Forward project. In 2016, he exhibited a series of photographs at the Almissa Open Art Festival in Omiš, and worked on the realization and photo documentation of the “DO IT” project at the Museum of Fine Arts in Split. In 2017, he had his third solo exhibition, “Sade Sati” in Salon Galić in Split, he exhibited at the Greta Gallery in Zagreb – the group exhibition “The Eighth Day” and he participated in the group exhibition “Entropy of the City” at the Croatian National Theater in Split as part of the 63rd Split Summer. In 2018, he exhibited “Sade Sati” at the Greta Gallery and Botaničar in Zagreb. He is the author, cameraman and director of photography for several short feature and documentary films.