Exhibition Ivana Šuletić - Falsa imagine

IVAN ŠULETIĆ: FALSA IMAGINE

EXHIBITON

13 May - 2  June 2026

Gallery AMZ
Pavla Hatza Street 6
free entrance

The opening of the exhibition will take place on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, starting at 7 PM

In a daily reality saturated with images of suffering and scenes of horror, the works of Ivan Šuletić invite us to reflect on the numbness these images provoke in us. While photographs of wartime destruction were once confined to newspaper columns or archival collections, today we encounter them every day, wedged between viral recipes, advertisements, and memes. They have become an almost imperceptible backdrop to our digital lives.

It is precisely within this context that the works from the Falsa imagine cycle emerge. The artist employs the capabilities of artificial intelligence, inputting textual prompts on the basis of which the algorithm generates images of ruins—compositions that, like mosaics, are assembled from fragments of real catastrophes, yet stripped of any temporal or spatial context. Visually recognizable, yet at the same time anonymous, these images evoke unease because they remind us of something we know but cannot name.

At a time when photographs or video recordings can be generated with complete plausibility, the artist asks whether a “false” image can awaken genuine empathy. Do we have the capacity to feel compassion for a scene we know to be artificially generated?

By transferring these generated scenes onto canvas using classical painting techniques, Šuletić gives them a physical presence before which we must pause. He does not attempt to convince us of their “reality,” but instead asks what we expect from an image and how, in a “numbed” reality, an image can convey the feeling of human suffering.

By situating the exhibition within the space of the Gallery of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, the artist and the curatorial team open up a space for a different mode of observation. In a setting that does not compete for attention, we are invited to read the works in layers, like archaeologists of the contemporary moment. Perhaps it is precisely through this slow, layered viewing that we rediscover the empathy an image can generate.