Božidar Pejković: o-message

The exhibition Božidar Pejković: o-message opens in the Studio of the Antun Augustinčić Gallery in Klanjec on Friday, April 25, 2025, at 7 p.m., and will run until June 25, 2025.

With this exhibition, the long-time director of the Antun Augustinčić Gallery bids farewell to his work team and the museum community as he retires.

O-message is named analogously to e-mail. While the prefix e- is formed by shortening the adjective electronic, the prefix o- is formed by shortening the adjectives optical and ocular. And the shape of the circle itself as a graphic sign already exists as an Egyptian hieroglyph in the representation of the eye, while in the later Phoenician script, the regular circle carries the lexical meaning "eye". However, if we ignore the conjunction, or sound space, we are humorously playing with the transferred meaning of the word. As a lover of language – be it verbal, visual or any other sensory one – with this exhibition I try to speak articulately and understandably in the language acquired through my upbringing on the principles of Bauhaus, formalism and structuralism, with which I grew up, matured and, I hope, measured up. With it – at the end of my working life and hoping for my future working life – I bid farewell to my working team and the entire museum community, with expressions of gratitude and affection.

(Božidar Pejković)

The exhibition was realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, and can be viewed daily, except Mondays, from Tuesday to Friday from 9 am to 5 pm, and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 am to 6 pm.

Božidar Pejković was born on April 26, 1960 in Zadvarje. He attended elementary school in Zadvarje and Omiš. He enrolled in the five-year School of Decorative Arts and Industrial Design in Split in 1974 and graduated in 1979 (Department of Industrial Design). He also attended two preparatory classes and three secondary classes of the Josip Hatze Music School in Split (Department of Theory). He then studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, and in 1989 graduated with a degree in comparative literature as the first A subject and art history as the second A subject (degree thesis on the literary translation of John Donne: La Corona). After completing his studies, he continued to live in Zagreb. During his studies, he worked as an assistant props maker at the &TD Theatre in Zagreb for two years (1981-1982), and after graduating, he was employed at the Language Centre in Zagreb, where he taught cultural and historical heritage in the 1990/91 school year. At the end of April 1991, he came as an intern to the position of curator at the Antun Augustinčić Gallery in Klanjec, and in June 1992, he took the professional exam (topic: The Problem of Originals in Sculpture). In the same year, he enrolled in postgraduate studies in art history at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb (topic: Methodology of Documenting Sculpture in the Function of Research and Protection). After the Antun Augustinčić Gallery became part of the newly founded museum institution Museums of Croatian Zagorje by the Decree of the Government of the Republic of Croatia in July 1992, he worked as the acting curator. manager and since March 1993 as the head of the organizational unit Museums of Croatian Zagorje – Antun Augustinčić Gallery, with the title of senior curator since July 1999 and with the title of museum advisor since December 2021. In the period from 2014 to 2016, he was also the assistant manager of the Antun Augustinčić Gallery Studio project, implemented with funds from the European Union. He will retire at the end of April 2025.

Dealing with all segments of museum activity, he has gained rich and diverse work experience: he is the author of around sixty exhibitions (monographic, studio, problem, author's) and a few more exhibition displays, guides for children and young people, and numerous workshops and pedagogical programs. In 2010, he designed and initiated, and subsequently partially implemented, the Gallery's long-term exhibition program on the occasion of the International Day of Peace, With Peace for Peace; conceptualizes and organizes several significant symposia on museological, art-historical and theoretical topics (Antun Augustinčić in the context of Croatian and European sculpture, 1995; Museums in Croatia – yesterday, today, tomorrow, 1996; Sculpture in the open air, 2003; Original in sculpture, 2008; The problem of monuments: a monument today, 2013; Sculpture in a museum, 2018; Thesaurus of sculpture, 2023); as editor of all publications of the Gallery, since 1993 he has edited the journal Annals of the Antun Augustinčić Gallery (in which he also publishes collections of works from the aforementioned symposia), more than a hundred exhibition catalogues and smaller or larger publications, and he also designs the vast majority of them graphically. In 2000, he began the Gallery's indispensable participation in museum educational campaigns of the Section for Museum Pedagogy and Cultural Action of the Croatian Museum Society (16 of which he signed), and in 2010, he participated in the Museum Night event (12 of which he signed). During his increased activity in the Croatian Museum Society, he served as the president of the Section for Museum Pedagogy and Cultural Action (2006–2010) and a member of the Executive Board (2006–2008). He initiated and conceived traveling exhibitions of posters of participants in museum educational campaigns (Baš-ti-na Iznenađenje, 2007; Originalni dionici, 2008; [U]okvir[i], 2009), conceived and led the Original campaign (2007), and edited all publications of the Section. In 2016, the Croatian Museum Society awarded him a Special Recognition for his outstanding contribution to the work of the Section for Museum Pedagogy and Cultural Action of the Croatian Museum Society. In addition to his basic museum and gallery work, he is involved in the theory of sculpture and sculptural expression. With an articulated visual language, he shapes conceptual concepts into sculptural expressions. He has exhibited solo in Klanjec (Museum(s) have a right, 2001; Museums and Globalization: Interpreting Globalization – Explanation and Understanding, 2002; Sculpture Portal / Bridge, 2005; Silent Inventions, 2006; Changing Fountain, 2012; Dialogue, with Petar Popijač, 2013; O-poruka, 2025), Zagreb (Silent Inventions, 2007), Bol (Silent Inventions, 2011) and Split (Silent Inventions, 2017) and in group exhibitions in Slavonski Brod (GAA Salon Collection, 2009) and Klanjec (GAA Salon Collection 1992 – 2022, 2022). In 2012, Ive Šimat Banov included him in his book Croatian Sculpture from 1950 to Today.