Host: Muzej-Museo Lapidarium, Novigrad (www.muzej-lapidarium.hr)
Co organizer of  X-OP project  (www.x-op.eu)
Perod: 15.08.-10.09.2009.
Area: Visual art
Location: Novigrad, Croatia
Selected Artist: Goran Tomčić

Exhibition reception at Gallery Rigo, Novigrad on 31.08.2009.

From  August 31st the Gallery Rigo in Novigrad will  host the exhibition of   artist  Goran Tomčić :  “SHIMMERING HEART, GOLD”

The “Shimmering Heart” is as a series of five monochromatic exhibitions in green, red, blue, gold, and silver. The first installation realized, “Shimmering Heart, Silver” (Participant Inc., NYC, 2005) was comprised of a rectangular heap of one million little Mylar hearts (one million silver, heart-shaped sequins on the gallery floor), surrounded by three walls wallpapered with a collage made from numerous patterned, self-adhesive silver holographic films.

This spacious, inner-directed surface, composed of meticulous cutouts of silver holographic paper, reflects itself as well as the sea of sequins on the floor, absorbing light and reflecting those present. These whimsical materials evoke and provide a bittersweet acknowledgment of the humble, everyday emotionality. If mountains of consumer goods can achieve a quiet impressiveness, then, the “Shimmering Heart” series inverts the theory of mass production by transforming its (many) objects into delicate originals. In the “Shimmering Heart” series these materials are used and appropriated to make a subtle and minimal installation in which materials used loose its original meaning.

For the X-OP Residency in Novigrad, Croatia (2009), Goran Tomcic will install the next installment of the “Shimmering Heart” series: the “Shimmering Heart, Gold”. This installation will be his first totally holographic installation in Croatia.

X-OP – eXchange of art operators and producers is a gradually growing network of artists, researchers, operators, producers and centers with the aim to establish European platform for creation of art and exchange. With its places, spaces and user oriented technological infrastructure it fosters mobility of artists, theoreticians and executives. It is built to strengthen pan-European and global collaboration, common production and interdisciplinary approach to art.

The X-OP project is multi-annual project, from 2008 to 2011, and is supported by European Commission – Program Culture.

GORAN TOMČIĆ
gorantomcic@hotmail.com

EDUCATION
5/1996 – 9/1994
M.A. in Curatorial Studies
Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
4/1991 – 9/1985
B.A. in Art History and Comparative Literature
University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
15/12/ – 15/1/2007
“Overlap”, The Windows at the Kimmel Center, NYU, New York, NY
6/10 – 7/30/2006
“Pom-pom Sky,” Carriage House, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
2/13 – 3/13/2005
“A Shimmering Heart (Silver), Participant Inc., New York, NY
4/9 – 4/30/2004
“Kairos (Lost You Somewhere),” Raccoon Space, Queens, NY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
June/2009
“From Our Living Room To Yours,” Keith Talent Gallery, London, UK
11/3/07 – 2/24/08
“BoysCraft,” curated by Tami Katz-Freiman, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel (cat.)
9/27/07 – 10/25/07
“Rock n’ Roll Fantasy,” curated by Daria Shapiro, White Box, New York, NY (cat.)
5/20 – 4/6/2007
“Goodbye 95 Rivington Street,” curated by Lia Gangitano, Participant, Inc., New York, NY
5/18 – 5/26/2007
“on spec: Kaoru Katajama, Diana Puntar, Goran Tomcic,” White Box, New York, NY
5/12 – 5/16/2007
“Silent Benefit Auction 2007,” White Box, New York, NY
7/21 – 8/31/2006
“Sci-Fi Lullabies,” curated by Daria Shapiro, The Fireplace Project, East Hampton, NY
7/15 – 9/2/2006
“Paperworks,” curated by Daria Shapiro, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2/23 – 3/2/2006
“Body.City,” curated by Branko Francheschi, Gallery MC, New York, NY
3/8 – 3/28/2005
“Exploding Plastic Inevitable: 40 Fun Galleries,” Curated by Scenic,
Bergdorf Goodman Department Store, New York, NY
2/3 – 3/5/2005
“Suspended Ornament/Suspended Space,” Suite 106 Gallery, NY, NY
6/4 – 7/2/2004
“Art and Reconciliation,” Raccoon Space, Queens, NY

SELECTED ESSEYS AND REVIEWS
11/2007
“Craftsmen in the Factory of Images,” by Tami Katz-Freiman, in “BoysCraft” exhibition catalogue, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel (illustrations)
7/2007
“The New Psychedelics (Abetz & Drescher, Jeremy Earhart, Goran Tomcic), by Daria Brit Shapiro, D’LUXE Magazine, Miami, Summer 2007 (illustration)
10/2006
“The Fireplace Project: Edsel Williams’s Art Space, Kindred Spirits Find a New Haunt,” by Susan M. Galardi, Vox Magazine #57 (illustration)
2/18/2005
“Goran Tomcic at Participant, Inc,” by Nick Stillman, (Critics’ Picks), artforum.com, February 20005
2/21/2005
“Goran Tomcic: “A Shimmering Heart (Silver,” at Participant, Inc.” by Denis Licul, Croatian Chronicle/Hrvatska Kronika, Volume 3, Number 15, February 21, 2005

SELECTED GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2007
Pollock-Krasner Grant, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, NY
2006
Artist-in-residence, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
2004
The Artists’ Fellowship Grant, The Artist’s Fellowship, Inc., NY
2000
Travel Grant to Israel, Israeli Ministry of Culture, Israeli Consulate, in New York, NY
1996
The MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Peterborough, NH
1992
The MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Peterborough, NH

ARTIST STATEMENT
Art is unique expression of feeling that allows artists to interpret the observed into an art form. For me, art resides within the miracle of life: its fragility and strength. My work is concerned with emotional and sentimental, as well as political. I work with shiny and reflective, street materials. They allow me to capture my fascination with the movement in space and passing in time. I am attracted to the ephemerally of the materials I use. In composing my installations, holographic collages, or mobiles, I appropriate and reinterpret the mass produced objects, such as the self-adhesive holographic films, various stickers, pom-poms, sequins, fishing line, wire and similar.The viewer is in the midst of my interest, as the viewer, accustomed to seeing the materials in a familiar domestic context, has to re-think and re-visualize them as they take shape in new forms and new meanings.