Radenko Milak (b.1980 Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina) uses the mirror of painting to explore the major questions and upheavals of our time. Milak came to international fame in 2017 through ‘University of Disaster’, his artistic submission for the Bosnia and Herzegovina pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. Since then, His works have been found in important public collections, most recently the Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia), at Marta Herford (Herford, Germany) and the Folkwang Museum (Essen, Germany), the Albertina Museum in Vienna and The Ludwig Museum in Budapest.

Radenko Milak’s focus is on the relationship with reality and history through the transformation of photographs into paintings. He translates press photos from printed media and the internet into meticulously detailed watercolors in soft black-and-white tones creating intimate pictorial references to current events. By consciously translating these images from one medium to another, he reinforces the message of the original image. This process allows him to transfer these messages from the past to the present, stimulating the viewer to re-evaluate forgotten and invisible realities. As such, topics like major world catastrophes, wars, global environmental crises.