What do you make towards when you are presenting a series of work?
Hotel Marina Lučica was a solo show by Berlin-based artist, Aleksandra Domanović that ran from July 20 to October 10, 2015, at Art Space Pythagorian, a former beachside hotel resort on the Greek Island, Samos. The hotel was one that Domanović used to visit in former Yugoslavia, where she lived until its dissolution in 1992.
It is fascinating how specific the imagery is in the works throughout the show. The pieces are illustrative of scenes that the artists remembers about the hotel, personally. In one room a tender moment is captured in an image drawn and shaped as though looking through a tear in a wall. It is of a man and woman looking out to sea and it is printed on the side of a column of individual sheets of white A4 paper. More columns, all ‘Untitled’ and made in 2012, have other things on their sides: an illustration of some flowery shrubbery hanging below a hotel, for example. All of the stacks of paper have a couple of rounded stones on top of them, which among other things reveal how white and bright the paper is underneath.
Domanović has also made a few digitally rendered portraits of the former leader of Yugoslavia, which hung in The Art Space Pythagorian – like they would have done, according to the press release, in many public buildings and hotels. Except she has made them look soft and layered -like the individual sheets of paper.
Then there is the plant room, which makes you think maybe this hotel also had a plant room, or a greenhouse. This just contains potted plants. Then there is a large outdoors chess set, but not one whose players have heads that represent or say other things that art can otherwise sometimes do. The mediation between the hotel and the work here is very slight. This is just a large outdoors chess set.
It’s as though Domanović is seeking and gaining meaning through the hotel (the actual hotel: the building; the chess set; the lobby; the experiences and the memories built into the views; or the views built into the memories). Then there is the room with the videos. One of them is called ‘From Yu to me’ (2014). Hotel Marina Lučica asks of art-making, how close the memory can be to the rendering, how close the end part can be to, or from, the beginning. **
Exhibition photos, top right.
