Friday, 9 October 2026 at 7 pm
On Friday 9 October at 7 pm, the exhibition The Conference of the Birds by Aleksandar Bezinović will open at Gallery Forum, 16 Tesla Street. The title is borrowed from a cycle in the Sufi poem by the Persian poet Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, written around 1177.
"In repetitive, rearranging forms we find the keys to proportion, scale and rhythm that are inscribed in our perception, that is, in our bodies. We do not seek in these works a relationship between the image and ourselves (for that would imply we are two separate entities), but rather ourselves.
A picture, if well composed, is in fact the Absolute. A work that, through its formal relationships and semantic structures, leads us to self-awareness. Bezinović's formats are, for the most part, monumental, and on them the combinations of arc segments and circles look like a breathtaking choreography viewed from a distance. It is at once the dance of a dervish and a mass rally in celebration of a socialist society. It is both: for there is no duality between the metaphysical and the worldly, the spiritual and the secular, nor between the individual and the community, whose existences alternate before our eyes in such dances. For this reason, these paintings are on the one hand extremely materially present – both in their aforementioned size and in their visibly loose brushstrokes. Contributing to their presence are also the sheets of lead sheet integrated into the paintings, that coarse material which emphasises the physical permanence of these works," writes the author of the foreword, Forum Gallery director Feđa Gavrilović.
Aleksandar Bezinović was born in 1975 in Split, where he completed the School of Applied Art and Design — Department of Graphic Design. In 1993, he enrolled in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and graduated from the class of Zlatko Keser. After completing his painting degree, he works at the Croatian Restoration Institute in the department for polychrome wooden sculpture. From 2007 to 2019, he collaborated on numerous film and theatre projects as a set painter and coordinator of set painters. He has continuously exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad.
The exhibition can be viewed until 31 October 2026.