The exhibition entitled Exuviae offers a profound and abstract reflection on the body as a shell of the spirit, on its changing, yet at the same time inevitable nature. The very name "Exuviae", which denotes the discarded, overlaid outer layers, clearly refers to the process of transformation and release, and the transition from one state to another. The paintings that make up this exhibition deal with the body as a carrier of life and traces, in which spiritual imprints are retained.
The body is shown here not only as a physical structure, but as a reflection of the inner world, as a shell that changes over time, adapts, and finally releases.
In this cycle of paintings, the body becomes a space where spiritual experiences and physical reality meet, a place where everyday, often invisible processes of transformation are interwoven with the symbolism of change, forgiveness, and evolution. Through the motifs of the body that peels, grows, and renews, the paintings evoke ideas about the transience and inevitability of spiritual and emotional cycles.
Exuviae explores the relationship between the inner and the outer, in which the outer world is always only a reflection of what is happening in the depths of human existence.
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Grgur Akrap was born in 1988 in Zagreb. In 2013, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Through his painting work, he explores the property of color as a means of symbolic, archetypal and mythical expression of universal civilizational values. On the other hand, he also uses color as a means of expressing individual and subjective psychological and spiritual states. The symbols that appear in his paintings indicate an aspiration for a metaphysical fusion of the visible and the invisible, and at the same time the creation of an opposition between the real and the rational through mystical and exotic fantasy.
His works have been featured in the renowned art and culture magazine Juxtapoz and included in the Dutch cultural magazine SeeAllThis. Additionally, he has participated in many solo and group exhibitions both in Croatia and abroad, receiving several awards, including the Iva Vraneković Award at the 4th Biennial of Painting in 2017, the award from the 51st Zagreb Salon presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in 2016, and the Young Artist Award at the 3rd Biennial of Painting in 2015.