About | SYNESTHESIA

Free – lance professional artist.

Painter, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia.
She also designs, does photography,
makes ceramics and teaches art.

Her most recent works are lumino-kinetic objects.

She also takes photographs of the objects and those photographs,
which look like computer made graphics, are autonomous abstract works of art.

Held 25 solo exhibitions and participated at more than 300 juried ones at home and abroad.

More important awards:

Awarded for drawing from the Museum of contemporary Arts at the biennal exhibition of drawings at the Cabinet of Graphics of the Croatian Academy of Science and Arts and twice from the graphics and print collection of the National and University Library in
Zagreb at the same exhibition
(1987, 1989 and 1993).

1999 and 2000 – books / catalogs for Vojo Radoičić and Stella Skopal were among10 most beautiful Croatian books and represented Croatia at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

2008 – won special award at the 1st Croatian Triennial of Ceramics

2012 – award for artistic photography in Paris which work has become part of the
Collection of Photographs Bibliotheque
National de France

2013 – won a silver award for design at the International Exhibition in Como, Italy, which work has become part of the
Design Museum MOOD.

Her most recent awards for design are :

Silver award for FRED cuffs (bracelets),
award for DIANA Plexiglas bag and
runner-up JOY Plexiglas necklace at A’DESIGN AWARD in Como, Italy, 2013.

Diana Sokolić’s work is an example of carefully constructed and well-rounded, poetic expression, covering all the so-called great themes of 20th century modern art: exploration of the relativity of time and space, spatial and temporal illusionism, and the use of different materials, genres and media, which are brought together in one large visual and semantic whole. Diana Sokolić seems to carry out with ease the almost impossible mission of synthesizing visual art (which conceals the potential danger of theoretical and metier pretentions), and produces well-conceived artefacts. However, at a time in which the technological and technical opportunities of artistic expression are limitless, the artist does not go in for computer programming, but opts for what is today a more arduous path, pursuing optical-kinetic explorations that date back to the 1960’s and 1970’s.

In a series of her luminous-kinetic objects dating from 2010 and 2011 she takes a new approach in developing the idea originally conceived by Aleksandar Srnec between 1970 and 1973, who used so-called box-objects, in other words, luminous-kinetic objects, i.e. an electric motor, plexiglass, metal and a light bulb. In Diana Sokolić’s work, the graphic matrixes are far more complex, the technique more sophisticated, while the classical light bulb is replaced by LED lighting, and the impression of spatial and genre illusionism is brought to perfection. Every one of her objects is conceived as a small stage which kaleidoscopically draws our senses into its magical world, like “a simulation of effects of large set-design systems” (Branka Hlevnjak). And although the source of the luminous-kinetic objects may be traced back to the experience of Op-art and New Tendencies, and the visual matrixes of Victor Vasarely of the second half of the 1960’s, Diana Sokolić presents us with new spatial-visual solutions, which are closely related to the more complex scheme of optical fibres than to the visual psychedelics of Op-art matrices. Her objects manage to bridge the time limitations, and must not be perceived one-dimensionally as a kind of hommage to earlier art exploration. For, whereas many objects made of plexiglass and metal dating from the 1960’s (especially among Italian artists) have come to be seen as interesting artefacts somewhat nostalgically captured in time and space, Diana Sokolić creates objects that go beyond linear conception and the perception of time. We are presented with possibilities of infinite

dimensions and worlds, and it is up to the observer to interpret them as a labyrinth, kaleidoscope or metaphor of complexity, and discover in them the beauty of human life. For the artist, the purpose of this activity is not merely a game, and therefore the use of colour in the matrices of objects is very carefully and systematically developed, as a chromo-therapeutic function of the colour frequency on the human endocrine-neurological system.

In the same way as she continues to explore the tradition of luminous-kinetic objects which in the photographs of the eye of the observer are immediately illusionistically transformed into fascinating coloristic and spatial computer graphics, Diana Sokolić maximally extends the limits of the retro idea of the synthesis of the art craft, applied art, stage design, industrial and graphic design with the so-called high art. Her armchairs are not only and hommage to the industrial design of the 1950’s and 1960’s, the evocation of Bernard Bernardi’s design and work, for example for the Šavrić factory, but they continue along the line of total conception of design, total-design, which many of the prominent Croatian architects developed in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s of the past century, drawing and designing furniture for the large hotel complexes along the Adriatic coast. No art commission or art task was seen as being less valuable or representative of the artist himself! The optical effects present in the matrices of the slip-covers recall the great, relaxed moments of the 1970’s disco era, but at the same fit in well with the new trends of rave, hip-hop and trance. It is as if the entire art opus of Diana Sokolić strives to surpass and bridge time limits, rigidity of trends, limitations of the art metier and theoretical considerations… to reject the artificially imposed chronology, without giving any false illusions of new utopian worlds.

Iva Koerbler

Catalogues

2014. crkvica Svete trojice, Kastav

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