Ivona Jurić – Closed Script

Ivona Jurić – Closed Script

IVONA JURIĆ – CLOSED SCRIPT

The exhibition “Closed Script” by Ivona Jurić is the eleventh in a series of exhibitions dedicated to the memory of painter and printmaker Izabela Šimunović. Through this exhibition series, Scena Amadeo and the Croatian Natural History Museum present visual artists whose works are inspired by themes from the natural world.

Ivona Jurić was born in Zagreb in 1987. She graduated from the School of Applied Arts and Design in 2005 and completed her studies in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2010, in the class of Professor Duje Jurić. During her studies, she spent three months in Brno, Czech Republic.

In 2014, she participated in an artist residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, followed by the Air Kaunas residency programme in Lithuania in 2015 and the CEEC residency programme in China in 2016.

She received the Academy of Fine Arts Award for outstanding academic achievement and excellence in her graduation project, the Croatian Association of Visual Artists Award for Best Young Artist in 2013, the Grand Purchase Prize of the 7th Croatian Watercolour Triennial in 2016, and the Purchase Award of the HAZU Print Cabinet in 2018. She is a member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. She lives and works in Zagreb.

Art critic Feđa Gavrilović writes in the exhibition catalogue:

“Plants are almost invariably present in Ivona’s scenes—whether in flowerpots, as expanses of harvested fields, or as wilderness where vegetation grows uncontrollably, following only its own internal laws. These images invite a variety of narrative interpretations and layers of meaning. Yet nature itself knows no meaning. The law of growth and flourishing is the sole reason for the existence of all flora, and this is another strong existentialist aspect of Ivona Jurić’s work. Everything simply exists, and so do we. All the meanings we assign to our lives are merely fairy tales—or, if you prefer, comforting illusions that protect us from a devastating sense of emptiness.” — Feđa Gavrilović