Americana Playground
Kristian Kozul (born 1975 in Munich) is a Croat artist, who held his first showing at Galerie Anhava in 2005. The theme at the time was the processing of mundane objects related to nursing and disabilities into glimmering opulent sculpture with the aid of glass mosaics, beads and feathers.
Kozul later moved to New York and the title of his present exhibition “Americana” addresses the iconography of the American West, which Kozul – like us – views on the one hand as an outsider and on the other hand as almost everyday material presented in films and other popular culture. The stirrup boots, wide-brimmed hats, lassos and saddles of cowboys are covered with the colours of the American flag employing sequins, feathers and chrome-plated spikes. They are magnificent sumptuous objects, symbols of the American dream and crystallizations of the archetypal American aesthetic. But they also reflect the ironic and distanced attitudes of a critical outside observer of American society regarding the glossy surface of American culture. This phenomenon can be recognized from another context: a super-professionally produced American show will arouse grudging admiration, while the viewer knows that it is only an extremely finely honed illusion. Reality lies elsewhere, and it is of completely different appearance.
Works by Kristian Kozul have been on display in numerous solo and joint exhibitions in many European countries and Japan. He has held solo exhibitions at the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, TZR Galerie Kai Brückner in Düsseldorf and the Goff + Rosenthal gallery in New York.