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The touch
Davorka Vadanjel
26/09/2025
Davorka Vadanjel’s cycle of works “The touch” starts from an intimate gesture, the reuse of leftover materials that carry traces of the past. Through artistic intervention, these fragments acquire new meaning and continue their life in a renewed context.
The author follows her husband’s footsteps through introspection, transforming pieces of wood that he once shaped with his own hands into reliefs.
Guided by intuition, she arranges fragments of wood, once parts of barrels, frames or furniture, into modules, arrays and compositions that range from simple, calm to more complex structures.
In some works, elements cascade like a domino effect, creating rhythm, movement and tension. It is in this play between order and chance that the power of these works emerges.
Different combinations of tactile materials merge into contemplative wholes that sometimes resemble pixelated patterns, motifs from nature or constellations.
From subtler to richer textures, from untreated wood with its patina to elements enriched with color, an abstract network of lines and volumes is created that only opens up with a change of perspective.
The works require the movement of the observer, approaching and moving away. Every glance and every movement changes the work, making it a living entity. These works are not just for viewing, they require interaction, time and presence. Fragmented and tactile up close, depending on the viewing angle and lighting conditions, they reveal new vistas from a distance. In this flickering, the works breathe, transforming into a moving image, a symbol of constant movement and transience.
Color, most often in earthy and muted tones, in dialogue with texture, surface structure and substrate, light and shadows create the impression that the works are pulsating and changing.
Every scratch and imperfection in the wooden pieces is a precious reminder that beauty is not in perfection, but in time and memory.
The exhibition “Touch” revives the fragments of the past, it carries a story and a trace of time that is not erased, but emphasized, permanent.
Biography:
Davorka Vadanjel was born in Rijeka in 1952. After graduating from the Pedagogical High School, she enrolled in the Pedagogical Academy in Rijeka, Department of Fine Arts. She graduated in 1973. Until her retirement in 2018, she worked as an art teacher at the “Ivan Goran Kovačić” Elementary School in Čepić and at the “Vladimir Nazor” Elementary School in Potpićno. With her students, she participated in numerous exhibitions, meetings, and reviews of artistic and stage expression (drama, costume design, scenography), for which she received recognition and awards at the municipal, county, and state levels. She is the author and co-author of several school projects and the documentary film Naše niti.
She has been running the Točka Art Workshop in Potpićno since 2000. She has artistically edited several collections of poems by Istrian poets. She has participated in the LUMS exhibitions in Rijeka and Brijuni, Passion Heritage at the Mimara Museum in Zagreb, and regularly at the Labin Art Festival, where in 2019 she was awarded a solo exhibition at the Labin City Gallery, which she held in 2020.
She is the recipient of the SIZ Award for Education and Primary Education, Rijeka (1983), the Giuseppina Martinuzzi Charter, Labin (1985), and the Labin Art Development Award (2019). She lives and works in Labin, Vinež.