In Furnace for the Sublimation of Spirits Silvio Vujičić shows the results of the new experiments from his artist’s studio. This time the crystal he uses in his “lab of wonders” as a material for sculpture is not harmless. It is a psychoactive drug, a crystalline xanthine alkaloid known as caffeine, in a pure form as white powder/crystals and for the sculpture he needs considerable amounts of it, a poisonous dose. In the installation, heated at 178 ºC, the stimulant under the glass bell is in slow but constant state of change and transformation, producing the gentle white sculpture in the upper vacuum glass chamber by sublimation and “running” into the lower glass vessel where it again crystallizes/materializes into another shape. The form of the sculpture is a mutation from contemporary laboratory glassware, Syrian illustrations of chemical apparatus from medieval manuscripts and woodcuts of alchemical vessels taken from Geber's Works (London, 1678).
Furnace for the Sublimation of SpiritsSilvio Vujičić (HR)
Video documentation (heater, vacuum pump, metal construction, plaster, caffeine crystal sculpture, silicone tubes, electric cords, borosilicate glass dome, borosilicate glass vessel, clamp, water), 2012
Silvio Vujičić (HR)
Silvio Vujičić (1978, Zagreb) is a visual artist and fashion designer whose work engages with themes such as clothing fetishes, sexual identity, painting pigments, gardens, poisonous and psychoactive substances, death and transience. He works across the media of printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance, marked by processes of material transformation through emergence and disappearance. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and the Faculty of Textile Technology in Zagreb. Since 2002 he has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad (Austria, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, China, Japan, USA), including the International Triennial of New Media Art, Beijing (2011, 2014); Digiark, National Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2014); FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2005, 2009, 2012); Platform3 – Spaces for Contemporary Art, Munich (2010); Device_art, Zagreb – San Francisco – Tokyo (2004, 2006, 2010). His works are included in museum and private collections in Croatia and internationally: Lauba and MSU in Zagreb, Albertina in Vienna, and FRAC des Pays de la Loire in Carquefou. He is the recipient of the 8th Croatian Triennial of Graphics Award (2019) and the 40th Youth Salon Award in Zagreb (2006).
