Ivan Gračner was born in 1975 in Kruševac (Serbia). He graduated and obtained his master’s degree at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, Department of Sculpture, in the class of Professor Zorica Janković. He received advanced training at La Cité internationale des arts in Paris in 2006.
He exhibited at over 100 group exhibitions in Serbia and abroad (Austria, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Romania). The exhibition at the Zepter Museum is the artist’s 12th solo exhibition.
His works are found in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and in numerous private collections.
He has received several awards, among which is the special award (Prix Spécial) of the Salon SNBA Carrousel du Louvre in Paris in 2005.
His numerous sculptures have been installed in public space in Serbia.
He is a member of The Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS) and The Association of Applied Arts Artists and Designers of Serbia (ULUPUDS).
He lives and works in Belgrade.
THE UNCONSTRAINED POWER OF ASCETIC FORM
Completely separate from the way Serbian sculpture is growing and developing today, Ivan Gračner’s work splits the space and tears the sky. The vitalistic spirit of his sculptures does not rest only in wood matter, which possesses this potential in itself, but is already embedded in the formative process itself.
His “totems” grow in sensitively measured size ratios and precisely fixed points where the fragments “kiss” extending upwards. A clear feeling of life force penetrates the shell of his mainly abstract, geometric compositions.
PLAMENA / FLAME, 2021
Behind that striking and unquestionable message stands great mastery in the craft of sculpting, composure and clarity in the manner of sculpting. And when he paints the trunks he is shaping, their caps or parts of the trunk in orange, when he uses tin instead of wood, it only represents the expanded vocabulary of Gračner’s statement, but also a special feeling for the distinctive values of the materials he uses, free from any conventionality. In other words, he was able to and knows how to translate an artistic act into the language of matter.
VEČNI PAR / ETERNAL COUPLE, 2024
Ivan Gračner’s sculptures have withstood all trials, regardless of the environment in which they found themselves by intention or by circumstance: in the yard of an abandoned industrial plant, placed in a natural environment – both wild and cultivated, in urban settings and when they were brought into gallery spaces… Not a single environment managed to “swallow up” their monumentality, not because of their size, but because of their immanent energy by which they radiate. But, they themselves had a different relationship to the space in which they were located. The open space seemed like their natural habitat. In closed, gallery space they swallowed up and appropriated the space in an authoritarian manner so that they could fully express their indigenous character. Therefore, not a single space takes anything away from them, nor does it add anything to them. They have their own persuasive life and “demands”. The rest, the personal experience of the observer depends on the interaction with Ivan Gračner’s sculptures.
ŽIVOTNA AMPLITUDA / LIFE AMPLITUDE, 2024
Created without preparatory sketches and drawings, without checking in small, gallery formats, these works testify to the maturity of the author’s ideas and hence the resoluteness with which he executes them directly in the material. The artist always allows the matter to speak its own language, whether it is wood, metal or a combination of the two, which he most often chooses. The author’s spontaneity in creating for certain resonates in the way one perceives an artwork. Without many words, in its statement Ivan Gračner’s sculpture is eloquent and impressive.
Savo Popović