Francisco Tomsich & Martin Zelenko Poles
VILA NOVA
Porton Gallery, Ul. Brače Korva 10, Grožnjan, Croatia
Wednesday 22.07.2026, 19:00
A co-production of Studio Porton and the cultural and artistic associations Seljak Čopič (Grožnjan) and Boja (Izola).
VILA NOVA
Francisco Tomsich & Martin Zelenko Poles
Vila Nova is a project by artists Francisco Tomsich (b. 1981 in Uruguay) and Martín Zelenko Poles (b. 1984 in Yugoslavia) devoted to the creation and exhibition of multimedia art works about and around the affinities between their artistic practices and the work of Ernesto Vila (1936–2025).
Ernesto Vila was one of the most important Uruguayan contemporary artists of the past 50 years. He exhibited in numerous international exhibitions, collaborated with many artists, and received numerous awards and recognitions. Martin Zelenko Poles and Francisco Tomsich are both multimedia artists whose works span sound and painting, text and video, installation and sculpture. They share with Ernesto Vila this multidisciplinary approach, as well as a preference for humble, (post-)industrial, and fragile materials, used for their symbolic value but always tied to representation. All three artists are known for their layered, sometimes unclassifiable objects, laden with references to history, memory, and current events, often imbued with biting criticism and a serious sense of humor. Furthermore, Tomsich has collaborated with Ernesto Vila in the past, exhibiting alongside him, writing about his work, and maintaining a friendly dialogue with him that lasted until Vila’s death in 2025.
The project started in mid-April 2026, when a recently published book about Ernesto Vila’s oeuvre ((Primeras) Sobras de arte incompletas de Ernesto Vila, Montevideo, Fundación El Monitor Plástico, 2026) traveled in Francisco Tomsich’s luggage from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Izola, Slovenia, where Tomsich and Zelenko live and work. Upon the study of the book, both artists, who have collaborated for a long time and have exhibited together in the past, decided to launch a a complex operation of appropriation, interpretation, and dialogue.
The first exhibition/event of the project co-produced by Boja and Ottovolante Association and was carried out in Arco Iris R, Bologna, on 28th June 2026 (unintentionally on the precise date of Ernesto Vila’s birthday). The multimedia installation comprised existing, recent, and new (collaborative) works by Tomsich and Zelenko Poles created and assembled under Vila’s influence and provided a model for future replications. Vila Nova is a portable exhibition, which relies in site-specificity, improvisation and adaptation to different environments as much as in the collaborative nature of the project, the explicit references to Vila’s work and methods and the dialogue between Tomsich and Zelenko’s work. At the Bologna exhibition, for instance, Tomsich worked mostly on and around Ernesto Vila’s portrait, while Zelenko Poles displayed series of works which established a strong dialogue with Vila’s favorite materials and displaying strategies. Considering the flexibility of both artists’ practices, their roles, materials and strategies may be exchanged, overlapped or expanded in future editions of Vila Nova. The presence, or the representation of the absence, of Ernesto Vila, will not.
The Vila Nova project explicitly addresses contemporary approaches to cultural translation, artistic affinity, influence, the dissemination and replication of artistic practices, and the ambiguous and fluid figure of the master, the friend, the teacher, and the student. It is a memorial and a tribute; it is a laboratory and a game of (broken) mirrors. It traverses the last century and the Atlantic Ocean back and forth, more than once.
Francisco Tomsich 