GRGUR AKRAP
Grgur Akrap (b. 1988, Zagreb, Croatia) is part of a larger generation of emerging Croatian and Serbian visual artists who use figuration as a primary language of expression. For decades abstraction had been the canon in art academies across the region, while figuration was frowned upon as bourgeois or nostalgic. Akrap somehow weaponises bold and unapologetically mixed colours in an act of joyful rebellion against these past academic constraints.
His subjects are as far removed from his personal experience as possible - one doesn’t often come across African hunters, wild beasts fighting or centaurs around Zagreb. Whereas young artists are often prone to share their intimacy, Akrap chooses to not formally connect his work with his own experience. He remains therefore free to push the boundaries of his medium wherever his imagination and craft take him. His formal inspiration is found in Redon, Delacroix or Tiziano, which he then combines with his own dreams or visions. Only ever exploring the “how”, Akrap lets the viewer wonder about the “why”. And faced with these explosive yet poetic compositions, one can only end up asking “why not”.
Grgur Akrap is an assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and has exhibited in many solo and group shows in Croatia and abroad.