Friday, 19 June 2026 at 7 pm
The Forum Gallery
On Friday, 19 June at 7 pm, the exhibition Forum and the City by Petar Grimani will open at The Forum Gallery, 16 Teslina Street.
The exhibition explores the human body as the basic measure by which we perceive the world and the universe. The proportions that have shaped human development can be observed in a series of monuments, from the ancient pyramids, Greek temples and Roman cities, to contemporary art. Another way of activating the human body within the urban structure and the community, is performance art. Drawing on the tradition of this art form in Croatia, Grimani will transform The Forum Gallery into a space that invites visitors to participate in a performative act, through which they complete the exhibition project and its spatial installation. As Feđa Gavrilović, curator and director of The Forum Gallery, writes, the exhibition will connect the personal and the communal, the historical and the timeless: "The city is a field of human encounters, unions and connections, created on a human scale as an extension of the individual organism, yet also functioning as a single mega-organism. A forum - the intersection of the cardo and decumanus in ancient Roman urban planning - is the heart of the city: a place of chance encounters, the exchange of ideas and polemics, but also political upheavals, persecutions and violence. The Forum Gallery inherits that name (and all its connotations). For this exhibition at The Forum Gallery, Grimani has decided to reactivate the space through the human figure, the column as its architectural and material counterpart, and gold as its metaphysical analogue."
Alongside the exhibition, Grimani will perform on 21 June, the summer solstice. The performance will begin at the pyramid in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art (on Dubrovnik Avenue) in Zagreb. It will be the largest in a series of public performance works that Petar Grimani has been developing since 2015. The project takes place on the days of the solstice and equinox in different Croatian cities, each time engaging with a specific local heritage. For the performance in Zagreb, the temporary marking of three monumental sites is planned: the pyramids erected for the 900th anniversary of the Zagreb Diocese (at the intersection of Dubrovnik Avenue and Većeslav Holjevac Avenue), the monument to Većeslav Holjevac (Većeslav Holjevac Avenue) and the monument to Franjo Tuđman (at the intersection of Hrvatske Bratske Zajednice Street and Vukovarska Street).
Petar Grimani was born in 1971 in Split. After graduating from the High School of Fine Arts in Split, he studied at the Accademia di belle arti in Florence, and graduated from the Academy of Arts in Split. He earned a master's degree from the Arts Academy in Split (UMAS), at the Department of Film Art, specialising in narrative film. In his artistic work, he explores the interrelationship between space, time and identity, using various media, including photography, video and installation. His practice stems from a need to analyse everyday situations, personal and collective memories, and the ways in which they are reflected in visual forms.