Nikola Ukic. about the Senses of Possibilities: Cat. Mmsu Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka

Nikola Ukic's artistic practice explores growth and decay, serving as a metaphor for the ecology of capitalism - though the artist himself does not explicitly draw this connection, as many critics have noted. His work engages with fundamental questions of artistic creation, drawing on the progressive traditions of the 1960s, such as Readymade and Minimalism, which radically distanced sculpture from representational and monumental concepts. Ukic critically reinterprets sculptural strategies, addressing the crisis of coherent bodily experiences and the relationship between authenticity and fiction. Works like his polyurethane cubes, They breathe out as they rise , exemplify this approach. Mixed with varying doses of color pigments, the cubes reach their maximum volume upon filling their molds, then gradually deflate at their own pace. Their creation is subject to perpetual transformation, rendering them as mobile and fragile as the human body. Yet there is no linear aging process - a shrunken cube is no less significant than a new, smooth one. It is no coincidence that Ukic's exhibitions are often compared to Zen gardens, as they articulate a dialogue between nature and human labor - not as dissonant but as a new form of growth and being, resembling an ecology that examines the boundaries between nature and culture, the living and the dead, growth and permanence. Ukic's ecology stems from his reflection on form. He insists on its irreducibility and our capacity to endure it. In this sense, his practice tests the limits of possibility, placing elements side by side without neutralizing them. He is fascinated by the idea of how bodily masses can imprint themselves onto a surface without resorting to mimetic realism.