Dark matter is undefined material that scientists cannot see even with the use of the most advanced technology, of radio-telescopes, for example, or optical telescopes. Dark matter is not anything known and has never been directly observed. It is one of the biggest mysteries of astrophysics today. Its existence has been inferred from gravitational effects, such as the movements of visible matter (stars, gas, dust), the bending of light on its way from source to observer (gravitational lensing), its influence on big structures such as galaxies, and its impact on the cosmic microwave background, or CMB. Dark matter is part of space and is found everywhere in the universe.
The installation Black Trough conjures up the omnipresence of dark matter all around us from the standpoint of art, and with the use of a certain fluid presents its entwining of the galaxies, the stars and everything else that we can detect with the naked eye or with the use of technology available today.
Fluids are divided into what are called Newtonian and non-Newtonian. Newtonian fluids are characterised by having a constant viscosity notwithstanding any force that is exerted upon them. Water is an example: its viscosity is always the same and it flows equally irrespective of any force exerted. The properties of non-Newtonian fluids are just the opposite; their viscosity changes with a modification of the force that we exert on the fluid. An example is the fluid that is presented in the installation Black Trough. It is chosen to represent dark matter because of its interaction with any visitors who happen to be in its vicinity. It is viscose when the force we exert upon it is small, but when the force is increased, the viscosity decreases. The visitors can touch the substance and affect it more or less strongly in order to study its properties. They can also place various objects upon it and study the way in which this fluid withdraws into its interior.
production: KONTEJNER (Uradisam_ARTLAB)
Ana Sladetić (HR)
Ana Sladetić graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where she defended her dissertation under the mentorship of full professor Ante Rašić and associate professor Leonida Kovač, PhD. She has exhibited at 17 solo exhibitions in Zagreb, Rijeka, Samobor, Koprivnica, Ilok, Paris, Berlin, Wiesbaden and St. Mary’s City, Maryland, USA. She has participated in over 150 group exhibitions in Europe and abroad, including the Recontre / Begegnung / Encounter (2020, Haus Burgund, Mainz), Artist / Don Quixote (2019, Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg im KunstLANDing, Aschaffenburg), Portrait 2018 (2018, 3CICA Museum, Gimpo-si, Gyeonggi-do), 24th International Seoul Art Festival (2017, Chosun Ilbo Gallery, Seoul) and elsewhere. Sladetić has earned a number of recognitions, such as the Kranjčar Gallery Award at the 35th Youth Salon (2020) and the WCCA Award for Best Artwork of World Art Youth Festival, Seoul, South Korea (2016). She has participated in art residence programmes in Germany, France, Finland, Belgium and USA, and has held several public lectures and workshops in collaboration with Croatian and foreign cultural institutions. Since 2011, she works at the Department for Visual and Media Arts of the Academy of Art and Culture in Osijek, where she is assistant professor since 2017.
anasladetic.com
anasladetic@gmail.com
Nika Jurlin (HR)
Nika Jurlin was born in 1990 in Brežice, Slovenia. She is currently in her final year of a course in physics at the Natural Science and Mathematics Faculty in Zagreb, after which she will take a post-graduate course at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute of Groningen University, the Netherlands. She began to be interested in astrophysics at university, where with the mentorship of Associate professor Vernesa Smolčić she began a research career studying very distant galaxies. During her studies, she spent several months at the astronomical institute Astronomico di Bologna in Italy, at Oxford University, UK, and at the École normale supérieure de Lyon in France, where she worked on scientific projects from the domain of astrophysics, from optical to radio-astronomy.
Contact: nika@miltonia.com
