Ivica Capan

Digital Control mechanisms are the central theme of the Croatian artist Ivica Capan in his first solo exhibition at galerie michaela stock. Capan is using mass media images and gives a critical observation of today’s world. Candid challenges the viewer’s expectations of art and what the future of internet might be in light of a broader assimilation of digital technologies. Capan’s subjects not always only indirectly involve social, media or political criticism. A general topic throughout his works of the past years was that of the armed drone: a weapon that stands for digital control, military and political power of rulers and their deceiving propaganda for clean, supposedly “humane”, warfare. He oftentimes also practices this type of “overpainting”, here in digital form, in oil on canvas in order to disturb both the clear identifiability of mass-reproduced and distributed pictures and to expand the context of their origin. His work contains thematic references to art history, literature and popular culture and he examines changes that digital technology has wrought upon conceptions of space, time and culture.