Short Cuts - Part I: The Split by Zorica Čolić

Reception Rome presents Short Cuts, Zorica Čolić’s first solo exhibition in Italy. Conceived in two interconnected parts, the exhibition considers the body as contested territory. About Reception Rome is pleased to present Short Cuts , Zorica Čolić's first solo exhibition in Italy. Conceived in two distinct yet interconnected parts, the exhibition considers the body as contested territory. On one side stands the individual and the endless effort to remain intact, to claim an identity before it is claimed by others. On the other stand the forces — political, medical, institutional, and corporate — that seek to regulate the body's aesthetics, its care, its productivity, and its desires. In Čolić's work the body never appears whole. It arrives in fragments: prosthetics, silicone parts, dental casts, catheters, braces, surgical instruments. This repertoire runs through her entire practice, collected, recombined, and filmed in a palette of pale blues, pinks, and whites, the colors of clinical asepsis, of cleanliness, of reassurance. From this visual vocabulary emerge ambiguous presences, at once seductive and unsettling, that speak of a contemporary body permeated by foreign materials to the point where the idea of bodily purity is no longer conceivable. Running parallel to this investigation of matter is a reflection on desire. In Čolić's reading, sexuality has ceased to function as narrative (romance, seduction, storytelling) and has instead become reflex: a conditioned response to plastic and object-like stimuli, a cycle of arousal and frustration administered with precision by capital. Rather than illustrating this mechanism, the artist stages it, often through a humor that becomes, in itself, a form of resistance. Part I: The Split brings together two videos, a selection from the collage series Chimera (2021–2026) and Carnivorous Orchids (2021–2026), and Slip of the Face ( 2026), a small-scale sculptural work. Together, they trace a movement from the gaze upon the body, to its manipulation, and finally to its dissolution into image. The video Cutaneous Vision (2023) assembles a bewildering stream of corporeal imagery: silicone body parts, medical models, cosmetic attachments, and devices for bodily "enhancement" sold online. These images unfold alongside a voice-over text that moves between discomfort with the body and the pleasure of manipulating it, oscillating between seriousness and irony, realism and absurdity. The voice-over weaves together texts by Silvia Federici, Anne Boyer, Deleuze and Guattari, with the artist's own writing. Beneath it runs a continuous clicking sound: a binaural recording of Čolić's own joints cracking. What first resembles a technical glitch gradually reveals itself as the body insisting on its own presence, at the very moment it is being replaced by its replicas. The Split (2022) documents a single action: the splitting of a phallic vibrator with a power trim cutter. Drawing on Adorno's assertion that "the only truth in psychoanalysis are its exaggerations", Čolić pushes Freud's concept of penis envy to its limit. Attraction gradually gives way to an act of destruction. As the blade cuts through the object, its interior layers unfold: midway through the gesture, the phallus takes on the form of a vulva, only to reveal, at its core, another indestructible phallus. By pushing the gesture to the point of absurdity, the work exposes the instability of sexual difference and the impossibility of making desire coincide with anatomy. In the final sequence, the vibrator continues to function autonomously. Refusing to stop, it suggests how deeply the phallic imaginary is embedded in visual culture and in the commodified economy of pleasure. Chimera and Carnivorous Orchids are two series of handmade collages assembled from cuttings taken from medical manuals (surgical instructions, anatomical plates, organ sutures) and fashion magazines filled with furs, gemstones, and luxurious surfaces. In Chimera , body parts are recomposed into puzzle-like figures in which the human body counts no more than a piece of fabric, furniture, or pattern, exposing the manipulative character of advertising imagery. In Carnivorous Orchids , the fragments are meticulously arranged until they assume the form of orchids. From a distance they appear seductive; only on closer inspection does their material composition emerge. Beauty becomes inseparable from violence, mirroring what Franco Berardi describes as the "baroque reality" of semiocapital: a regime sustained by visual excess, illusion, and predatory exchange. The first part closes with Slip of the Face (2026), a sculpture in which a face is broken down into interchangeable parts — eyes, nose, lips repeated across a practice surface — and propped against a mirror. What appears as image in Cutaneous Vision returns here as object; the viewer is caught, by reflection, inside the frame. Together, these works examine a body that is observed, measured, desired, and dismantled from the outside. The second chapter, centered on the three-channel installation The Thing That Enjoys Itself ( 2025), shifts the focus from the body itself to the administration of enjoyment. Read more Toggle Multi-disciplinary Film / Video Sculpture Mixed media Installation