Vedran Kopljar (& parents) presents Voyages apstrakcija at Pizza Gallery Antwerp. Musing on notions of spiritual and identitary travel —and how they relate to abstraction—the artist transforms the gallery into a speculative travel agency.

In Voyages apstrakcija the visual language of tourism and travel agencies is abstracted and applied to ideas of the self and identity. The exhibition features sculptural display shelves and pedestals which house magazines, miniatures, scale models and other trinkets of non-geographical travel. Marrying the artifice of a touristic travel brochure with the presupposed profundity of matters of identity, Kopljar (& parents) creates compositions featuring a variety of self-designed brochures and magazines with covers that promise to inform you on the numerous aspects of selfhood.

These are laid out as objects, boasting terms such as Class, Hobbies, Trauma, Ideology, and so on. They solicit travels of the mind whilst potentially never materializing beyond an image. Abstraction as a tool for escapism and aestheticism is set against its potential for othering and dehumanizing. Rather than depictions of seas, beaches, mountains or forests, visitors to this travel agency are goaded only by images of abstraction.