Location: Salon Galić (Marmontova 3)

Date: March 8th - 29th, 2024

Project Curator: Martina Munivrana

From the introduction: "The exhibition and project by Darko Fritz, artist, curator, and graphic designer, Imagined Futures: Tourism, is the result of his long-term research project in which the artist establishes and questions the relationship between visionary, utopian projections of the future and their realization. The focal point of the exhibition is the never-realized project of a conceptual tourist resort in the shape of a human body in the Plitvine bay of Vela Luka, designed by Cuban architect Ricardo Porro (1925–2014) and inspired by Italian Mannerist painter Giuseppe Archimboldo. The project, conceived to embody a utopian synthesis of urbanism, architecture, art, and tourism, originated during the biennial event of the International Meetings of Visual Artists in Vela Luka in 1970. Thirty international urbanists, theorists, architects, and artists participated in the project and its development. The project was designed to seamlessly blend into the landscape of any Mediterranean location, shaping the settlement like a human body and its interior, with certain settlement facilities placed in units shaped according to the appearance of internal organs."

- Martina Munivrana

Biography: Darko Fritz (1966) is a visual artist and independent curator. He has presented his artistic work in over 30 solo and more than a hundred group exhibitions worldwide and has been part of artistic groups such as Studio Imitacija Života (with Željko Serdarević, 1987-1991) and Katedrala (1988). He is a critical observer of technology that transforms society, bridging the gap between contemporary art, media art, and online culture, addressing themes such as glitch and surveillance.

In addition to works in various media (graphics, film, photography, video, VR, internet, etc.), he creates a series of public space works, using atypical media such as tram traffic regulation or horticultural installations, merging content from the digital domain with organic materials. In 2006, he founded the association siva) (zona - a space for contemporary and media art, curating over 50 exhibitions. He curated the exhibition "bit international, [new] tendencies, computers and visual research, 1961–1973" in Graz (2007) and Karlsruhe (2008-2009), and authored the book and exhibition "Digital Art in Croatia 1968 - 1984" in Zagreb (2020-2023).

Fritz's texts have been published in Croatian, Slovenian, English, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Spanish, and Portuguese. He teaches at the Danube University Krems in the Media Art Histories program and is a member of professional organizations HDLU, ULUPUH, HZSU, and AICA.