Please note that on July 17, entrance to the Botanical Garden is free for exhibition visitors at 6 pm. The Botanical Garden closes at 7 pm. It will not be possible to enter the grounds after that time. To attend the opening, please plan to arrive earlier.

Please note, smoking in the Botanical Garden is strictly prohibited. We kindly ask that you refrain from smoking anywhere on the premises.

Tomislav Šoban is a visual artist as well as a film, TV and theater director whose authorial work is characterized by interdisciplinary approach, reflecting on correlations of text, space, duration and environment. His verses included in the exhibition can be read as a key for understanding the exhibition concept – observation of the relation between large and small, mundane and extraordinary, devastation and regeneration.

“I attempt
to discern spacious from small,
trivial from significant.
Marvelous from simple.”

– Tomislav Šoban

With the exhibition Buildings in the Garden, Tomislav Šoban invites us to slow down and observe processes unfolding outside our everyday rhythms. Using film, drawing, poetry, sculpture and spatial installation, the artist forms a kind of a model—a “pavilion within pavilion”—that intervenes within the architecture of the Botanical Garden. In this sense, the exhibition operates as a Russian doll: one space embedded in another, simultaneously staking the autonomy of the first space, while setting up a dialogue with the unique surroundings.

Šoban has a history of crafting handmade miniature models of buildings and leaving them on site in nature. He made the first such models already in 2010, while he was working on the film The Smallest (2013). At the time, model-making presented a solution to a lack of functional workspace; since then—and particularly with the project Gardens, which started in 2015—the artist has developed and expanded on this technique. For Gardens, Šoban transformed a greenhouse near Zagreb into an artistic atelier. Models of the nearby buildings (houses, a school, etc) stand in as the protagonists within the process of decline, transformation and a return to nature. Gardens refers to the phenomenon of devastated houses—of which more than 70,000 can be found across Croatia—that have been abandoned due to unsolved ownership disputes, or the consequences of war, poverty, and depopulation.

The opening will feature the screening of artist’s latest documentary-experimental film Abandoned Gardens (16 minutes, 2026). Combining time-lapse footage of various models under various weather conditions and times of day, the film reveals the dynamic of natural processes otherwise unregistered by human eye.

Moving between the microlevel of his carefully constructed models and the macrolevel of the landscape, the artist examines how natural processes slowly reshape human interventions. While one part of the exhibition consists of newly-made models, the other part, located within the “pavilion within pavilion,” consists of a series of drawings that operate as a visual diary of Šoban’s escapes to nature. Questioning his own status as a visual artist, he creates a series of sketches drawn using several pencils simultaneously with his non-dominant hand. This process allows him to explore the relationships between individual, collective, and institutional contexts.

Šoban has made a few new models—a gallery and a school, among them—consciously emphasizing the relevance of institutional and social contexts as well as the role of art in the wider social landscape. He has arranged them in constellations, evoking a new ecological community.

Tomislav Šoban was born in Zagreb in 1981. He studied graphic art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2004.  Since 2009, he has been an active member of Kinoklub Zagreb. In 2016, he completed a degree in film and TV directing, with a focus on feature film. He continues to research the form and means of expression that film can take, and has authored many short films across genres. The most prominent of these have been presented in festivals: Najmanji (The Smallest, 2013), Kako je Iva otišla 16. rujna 2016. (How Iva Left on September 16, 2016, 2016), Krhko (Fragile, 2019), Kada odlučim kako započeti, znat ću i sve ostalo (When I Decide to Begin, I Will Know All the Rest, 2021), and  Moj trener (My Coach, 2024.)  His films have been screened in festivals in Croatia and abroad, including Oberhausen, Jihlava, 25 FPS, Animafest, Animateka, Zagreb Film Festival, Tabor Film Festival, the Croatian Film Days, among others.) His experimental animated short The Smallest (2013) was recognized with the Vedran Šamanović Award for its innovative approach. In 2023, Šoban directed his first theater play Zbilja (Reality) in the hall of the Croatian National Theater.  He has since presented theatrical works at the 34th Festival of Croatian Drama Marulićevi dani, the 48th Days of Satire, and the Biennale of Scene Design 2024. He has directed two documentary series: Moderna vremena (2023) on industrial design in Croatia, and Plovopis (2024), on the south Croatian Pelagian Islands. Since 2024, he has lived in Osijek, where he is a cofounder of Kinoklub Osijek.

What, How and for Whom would like to thank the Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb for their generosity in hosting this exhibition, as well as the School of Applied Arts and Design, Zagreb for their cooperation as well.

We would like to extend personal thanks to dr. sc. Vanja Stamenković, Bernarda Cesar, Irena Škrinjar, Ivan Majzec, and Ivan Skvrce.
Exhibition display created in collaboration with the School of Applied Arts and Design, Department of Interior Architecture, Bernarda Cesar, Nenad Weltinger, and Igor Kozlina.

Building in the Garden is the second act of the exhibition cycle We Hope (Between the Lines), and a part of WHW program of exhibitions Remember Freedom and film program Remember Freedom: Images of Resistance.

Opening hours:
Thursday – Sunday: 12pm – 6.30pm
Exhibition is on until August 30, 2026
After the opening day, the exhibition can be visited with a purchased ticket to the Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Science.

The exhibition is supported by:
City Office for Culture and Civil Society
Croatian Audio-Visual Center – HAVC
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia
Kultura Nova Foundation