Sean Scully: Passenger

The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb is currently showing a retrospective of Sean Scully, titled Passenger which presents the artist’s work from the past 50 years. The exhibition presents sixty-four of Scully’s seminal artworks—canvases, works on paper, photographs, and sculptures—and provides a valuable cross-section of the artist’s oeuvre. The Zagreb instalment is the last stop of the exhibition’s European tour after it was first shown at the Museum of Fine Arts—Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, and was later hosted by the Benaki Museum in Athens and MAMbo—Museum of Modern Art of Bologna.

The retrospective has been adapted as a result of a dialogue with the Museum’s architecture, but also with its own heritage. As one of the first public art institutions in the world to call itself contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb has been, since its foundation in 1954, passionately presenting and promoting abstract art. Therefore, Sean Scully’s exhibition is a unique opportunity to see his heroic, monumental and emotionally immersive art in one of the largest art museums in central Europe. Looking at his oeuvre from the mid-sixties to the present day, the retrospective opens up a whole series of potential narratives, concurrences and contacts that may have happened in the past, as well as the foreboding of some future, perhaps unexpected recognitions of affinities and aspirations.

As part of the exhibition programme, a talk by David Carrier, art critic and philosopher will be held on March 1 at 5pm. Carrier has been a notable chronographer of Scully’s work from his early breakthrough days in the 1980s and has penned two monographs on the artist. In his talk he will give valuable insight into the artist’s early works, development of motifs and themes as well as an overview of his recent endeavours in figuration.

For the finissage of the exhibition, the author of the exhibition concept Dávid Fehér, director of the Central European Research Institute for Art History and curator of 20th-century contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest will give a lecture on Scully on March 11 at 12pm. While taking a stroll through the exhibition space, Fehér will explain the concept of the retrospective, approaches to the layout of the Zagreb exhibition in accordance to the Museum’s architecture, as well as touch on the major themes in Scully’s work. 

On occassion of the exhibition in Zagreb, an adaptation of the Budapest exhibition catalogue was published with over 60 works which include monumental paintings, works on paper as well as sculptural and photographic compositions. The catalogue includes texts by Sean Scully, Dávid Fehér, David Carrier, Arthur C. Danto, Kelly Grovier, Sunčica Ostoić and Raphy Sarkissian.

Main partner: Kerlin Gallery, Dublin