Location: Studio - 21 - (Velebitska 66)

Time: 2 July – 19 July 2026, exhibition opening at 8:00 PM

The exhibition is curated by art historian Ivor Igrec.

Curatorial text (excerpt by Ivor Igrec): “With the exhibition Topographies of the Repressed, artist Kim Mikasović presents a series of drawings engraved into glass and mirrors that she collected over the course of two years in the outskirts of Split. On these discarded, worn-out surfaces (window panes, parts of shower cabins, cabinet doors, refrigerator shelves), she manually engraves realistic scenes of abandoned and overgrown urban spaces—places erased from everyday life and, as she herself states, repressed from collective memory.

Her artistic process is inverse: the drawing emerges through a reductive logic of subtracting material, and the engravings only achieve their full presence under directed light on a wall, projected as a positive image. This dialectic between presence and absence already establishes the main leitmotif of the entire cycle. It is important to emphasize the first step the artist undertakes in this work—the gesture of collecting itself.

The artist systematically explored neglected urban areas, gathering glass pieces of various dimensions and thicknesses. She follows a clear criterion—selecting only intact pieces, and only exceptionally those with minor damage. The reasons are both practical and conceptual, as she does not evaluate objects by their utility value but by their status as discarded, worn out, and removed from circulation, focusing attention on what usually exists at the margins of the urban gaze.

On the collected glass surfaces, the artist engraves realistic scenes gradually, through grinding, piece by piece. Since the drawing is created by removing material, each line is in fact a depression, and the image becomes a series of precise absences—a drawing in negative. Where the glass has been ground down, a rough, milky-white trace remains, giving the image a tactile, physical dimension. The artist deliberately does not restore the glass: limescale, glue residues, discoloration, and small cracks are preserved as equal components of the composition.

Each surface thus unites two temporal layers: one accumulated through previous use, and the other inscribed by the artist. Damage itself becomes an indexical trace of duration rather than a defect.”

About the artist: Kim Mikasović (b. 2001, Split) lives in Kaštel Lukšić. She graduated from the Department of Painting at the Arts Academy in Split in 2025, in the class of Prof. Art Neli Ružić.

She held her solo exhibition Premieres 88 at Loggia / Zlatna Vrata Centre for Culture and Lifelong Education in Split in 2023, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Disassemble, Assemble, Continue – Module 2 and Module 3 at the Gallery of Fine Arts in 2024 and 2025, New Horizons (2024) at Galerija Flora in Dubrovnik, and the international contemporary art exhibition Spazio e Luci nelle Arti in Santa Maria di Sala – Villa Farsetti (Italy, 2024).

She is the winner of the 8th edition of the “A4” competition for young artists and curators, and recipient of the Rector’s Award for artistic work from the University of Split (academic year 2024/2025).

More information about the exhibition is available on the Studio -21- Facebook page

Gallery opening hours: Mon – Fri: 16:00 – 21:00; Saturday: 09:00 – 19:30; Sunday & public holidays: Closed