Ivana Franke was born in Zagreb in 1973. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Franke satisfied her scientific inquisitiveness by participating in a postgraduate research programme at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Kitakyushu, Japan. Methodological thoroughness and excellence are corner stones of her practice. This intellectual routine is necessary to maintain when addressing the ambitious and demanding subjects that she does.
Indeed, Franke investigates perceptive consciousness through various avenues. Light is a seminal perceptive prism in her corpus, and she has explored it from both a visual and spatial angle. Whether through light generated by an actual light source or an indirect play on lighting and shadows via scenography and installation structures, Franke meshes vision and space and blurs and questions their boundaries. The overarching result of her perceptive deconstruction is purely sensorial. She confuses the complementary forces of space and sight to the point where physical and mental perceptions intertwine and challenge understandings of reality often taken for granted. Two fantastic examples of her installations are: Towards a Phenomenology of the Unknown at Schering Stiftung Project Space in Berlin (2017) and Perceptual Drift (Galaxies in Mind) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (2017).
She has even pursued this ambitious artistic research academically, by engaging with neuroscience, as when she collaborated with neuroscientist Ida Momennejad who consulted on the project Seeing with Eyes Closed and with whom Franke organised a series of interdisciplinary symposiums to accompany exhibitions between 2011 and 2016 including: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2011); Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2012); Lauba House, Zagreb (2012); Max Planck Science Gallery, Berlin (2013), New Art Space Amsterdam, Amsterdam (2013), Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2014); European Conference of Visual Perception, Liverpool (2015); the Science of Consciousness Conference, Tucson, Arizona (2016).
Franke’s amazing corpus has found its way into public space thanks to commissions including: Entanglement is a Fragile State, Église St Nicolas, Caen, France (2012); Room for Running Ghosts, Hotel Lone, Rovinj, Croatia; Construction Site, the Zadar Forum, Zadar, Croatia (2003); Transparent, Ban Jelačić Square, Zagreb (2003).
Her career has been punctuated with regular awards and other forms of recognition. A few highlights include: the Josip Racić Award (2010), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2006), the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Award (2016, 2003 and 1997), the Ministry of Culture Awards at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Print Triennial (2003, 2000 and 1997), a Croatian Ministry of Science research grant (2001), the Croatian Association of Fine Artists Young Artist Award (2000) and the 1996 Rector’s Award from the University of Zagreb.
