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Goran Tomcic is known for his use of store-bought objects as raw material. He has three main bodies of work, two of which are shiny and reflective, and are included in Michael Petry’s Mirror Mirror: the reflective surface in contemporary art (T&H). One series features bright plastic sequins, another, gold holographic foil wrapped on a variety of surfaces. The third type of performative installation work is called Pompom Nets featuring multi-coloured acrylic pompoms sewn together to form large net like fabric hung in a public space or worn as a performance. His projects have engaged thousands of participants in India, Armenia,Ghana, the USA, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Slovenia, Ethiopia, Turkey,Croatia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2014 he mummified the artist Hunter Reynolds in golden holographic films for a Berlin exhibition Berlin. Tomcic plans a new performance using these reflective films for his London exhibition.His London piece will elide between sculpture and installation. Tomcic's Heartstrings sculptures feature thousands of hand sewn reflective sequins that form columns of glittering gold or silver that reflect the light in the gallery back onto the viewer. Sewn onto fishing line, they cascade down into the space like chandeliers suspended in unlikely locations. They have a quality of a disco ball covered in mirrors found in a queer nightclub in a rural location. They have the look and feel of the hand made, and revel in their not so metropolitain pristine production values. All of these pieces are discrete art works, however he often combines them into one grand installation, as in his MOCA London project.
Their odd domesticity recalls moments in the viewer’s own past. Who has not seen a special outfit that a mother or grandmother has worn to a wedding or a dance that had such embellishments? Tomcic’s sequins hit upon happy memories deep in most people’s psyche if they have grown up in the Global North like Croatian born Tomcic. He has said For me, shiny is part of my childhood, and is connected to shinly clothes my family in Croatia would get from the expanded family in New Zealand. They would send packages with old vintage clothes, and so much of it was 50s and very shiny. Sequined covered fabric is ubiquitous across the globe, in Africa and Asia as well as in the ‘new’ world of South America. It speaks a universal language of festive occasions, of being happy, even if for only a few hours.
The ephemeral nature of the works can mirror the life of the viewer; brief moments in the sun and light, and many hours in the dark. They hint at the darkness we all experience but they turn their shiney surfaces to face us and reflect us, to remind us that there is a positive side to life even as external forces conspire to make life worse. Whether we are worried about global warming, AI, data centers, or forever wars started by bitter old men, we can remember that a bit of disco dancing is good for the soul. Tomcic says that my work is like Abba’s songs, shiny and sad at the same time.
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