Radenko Milak. Proximity: The Bosnian Artist’s First Solo Exhibition in Italy at Fondazione D’ARC in Rome
On view until January 31, 2027, Fondazione D’ARC in Rome presents Proximity, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Radenko Milak, who represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 and won the 2012 Premio Combat in the Graphic Arts category. Curated by Giuliana Benassi, the exhibition explores the relationship between images, history, and collective memory, drawing on cinema, popular culture, and the visual imagery of the Italian capital.
The exhibition, which opened on October 18, stems from the artist’s residency in Rome in the spring of 2026, during which he developed an iconographic investigation into the city and the images that have shaped its cultural identity. This project forms part of his broader artistic practice, which focuses on the relationship between representation, history, and collective memory.
Exploring the city’s streets, architecture, and iconic landmarks, Milak gathered visual references drawn from the history of cinema, music, mass media, and popular iconography, paying particular attention to mass-produced prints and Roman souvenirs. His exploration also took him to Cinecittà, an emblematic site of the cinematic tradition that has helped shape the image of Rome around the world.
In Proximity, these images coexist without following a chronological sequence or a predetermined hierarchy. Film stills, archival photographs, references to pop culture, and fragments of urban history are brought together to generate new associations and narrative possibilities. It is precisely the proximity between seemingly unrelated images that forms the guiding principle of the exhibition, giving shape to a visual archive in which past and present overlap.
At the heart of Milak’s artistic practice lies painting, particularly black-and-white watercolor, a distinctive medium through which the artist reinterprets pre-existing images, removing them from their original documentary function. The absence of color introduces a temporal and perceptual distance, transforming photographs and film stills into images suspended between historical testimony and collective memory. The reference to cinema thus emerges not only in the subjects depicted but also in the structure of the exhibition itself, where the works follow and echo one another like sequences in a cinematic montage.
Among the central works in the exhibition is Umbra ante memoriam, a monumental architectural triptych inspired by the three-part structure of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso are reinterpreted through a succession of images spanning different eras and cultural references, without following a linear narrative. The openings within the structure become individual frames through which figures from art history, cinema, and the collective imagination emerge, like apparitions suspended between past and present. Details from the work also reappear in the large-scale intervention on Fondazione D’ARC’s monumental glass façade, where a window graphic transforms the architectural surface into an image permeated by light. Natural and artificial lighting alter the perception of the figures throughout the day, extending the artist’s pictorial exploration into the architectural and theatrical dimensions of the space.
Completing the exhibition is Cabinet, a large-scale composition of watercolors extending along the walls of Room M, bringing together iconic scenes from postwar Italian cinema, references to art history, and images drawn from popular culture. From the Laocoön to Jannis Kounellis, from the characters of Federico Fellini to those of Paolo Sorrentino, Milak’s visual universe spans different eras and artistic languages, reassembling them into a visual sequence reminiscent of a film reel unspooled across the space. Framed by architectural elements like individual film stills, the images engage in a dialogue through unexpected juxtapositions, giving rise to new narrative connections. It is through this continuous interplay of references that the meaning of the title Proximity becomes clear: a sense of closeness that extends beyond the physical proximity of the works to encompass the relationships that emerge between images belonging to distant times, contexts, and visual worlds.
The exhibition marks another chapter in the international career of Radenko Milak, who studied at the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka and the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, and whose artistic practice encompasses painting, watercolor, drawing, and animated film. Among the early milestones of his career in Italy was the 2012 Premio Combat, where he won the award in the Graphic Arts category. Even then, the jury recognized the particular relevance of his work, deeply rooted in the history and social context of the region in which he lived, while also acknowledging its technical excellence. Fourteen years later, this recognition takes on particular significance in light of the artist’s subsequent international acclaim, marked by his participation in the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, where he represented Bosnia and Herzegovina with the project University of Disaster.
With Proximity, his first solo exhibition in Italy, Milak adds a new chapter to this journey, reaffirming the continuity of an artistic practice that, while expanding its range of media and cultural references, remains centered on the relationship between images, history, and collective memory. Rome thus becomes a layered archive of representations and visual narratives, where cinema, popular culture, art history, and literature converge, generating new associations and exploring the ability of images to transcend time, transform, and acquire ever-changing meanings.
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