On view at Domino Window Gallery: Karlo Štefanek — Missing
Petrinjska 38, Zagreb | April 28 – May 19, 2025
The performance-based work “Missing” never functions in the same way twice. Each iteration is shaped by the site in which it appears, responding to its spatial, political, and emotional coordinates. Previous versions have occurred in cities like Amsterdam, New York, Venice, and Paris — not chosen arbitrarily, but for the ways they stage the tension between visibility and erasure.
Following these iterations, the new Zagreb version presented in Domino’s window gallery, marks a return of the work, and perhaps the artist, to a city he left at eighteen. The work here takes on a more intimate register, folding autobiography into absence — What does it mean to be “missing” from the place you’re from? Can absence be constructed within the very landscape of one’s origin? Can there be “nostalgia without consequences”?
Karlo Štefanek is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice examines how identity is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed through the mediums of self-portraiture and performance. At age eighteen, he moves to Amsterdam, where his first performance Veneration of St. Sebastian, commissioned for CC Amstel and the Becoming festival marks a pivotal moment in which he discovers his affinity for the medium of performance, shaping the trajectory of his subsequent works. Self-titled, the ongoing self-portrait series started in 2022, mirrors these performative elements. The idea that presence is always unstable and subject to deconstruction is evident in works such as The Artist Has Died and Missing from the same series. In The Artist Has Died, Štefanek radically declares his own death in the Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji list. Through this, he poses the provocative question must an artist die to gain respect, and who actually determines the end of an era or of art itself — the audience, critics, institutions, or the artist. Štefanek’s performances, like Hyaluron, where he willingly undergoes a plastic procedure to alter his image, or The Chair, strategically placed in Amsterdam’s museum quarter and Venice’s La Biennale, serve as critique of the hierarchies and conventions that define the art and the real world. In his most recent work, Against Self, Štefanek takes on a dual role, becoming the protester and the one protested against, marching through Zagreb for the Perforations festival. This performance questions identity as a constant battle fought for and against, as both an internal and external conflict, as well as a contrast between the individual and collective self. This, along with the artist’s other works, combines provocative and socially engaged elements, challenging viewers to reflect on their identities and the forces that shape them. Štefanek has been showcased at manifestations such as La Biennale (Venice), Becoming (Amsterdam), Perforations (Zagreb), and SerformanceP (São Paulo), as well as in institutions like the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb). Štefanek’s solo exhibitions are scheduled for this year at the Croatian Association of Artists (HDLU) in Osijek, ARL in Dubrovnik, KIC in Zagreb, and Vagon Gallery in Banja Luka. He will also participate in the 60th Zagreb Salon. The artist lives and works between Zagreb, Amsterdam and New York.
