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The exhibition 20/21 focuses on creative work of younger generation
of artists that was growing up and developing in a specific surrounding
of our newer history, from 1995 to 2005. This was the period of time,
when the position of `art in closed society` lasted and ended with
confrontational socio-political outcome on 5th October 2000.
Nikola Pešic, Siniša Ilić, Dejan Kaludjerović, Vladimir
Radišić and Ivan Grubanov belong to a younger generation of artists
that was reaching its maturity and creating in a hermetic society, such
as ours was in 1990s. This generation was aiming for the freedom of
expression, an open communication with the world and it was open for new
artistic experiments and disciplines. These artists develop their
artistic practice relying on up-to-date and current artistic trends, in a
world of modern theories, disciplines, use of new materials and
technology. By their creative work and education at international
universities of arts of greatest prestige, they contributed to a strong
development of modern cultural scene in Serbia and Montenegro as well as
to the promotion of innovative cultural identity of our country in Europe
and in the world, which is proved by their frequent involvement in
exhibitions and festivals both in our country and abroad, especially
after the year 2000.
After the disintegration of Yugoslavia
at the beginning of 1990s, the disintegration of Yugoslav artistic scene,
which was lasting and developing simultaneously in several centers (Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb…), came as
natural. During the `90s, each of these centers continued developing
their own artistic practice within separate entities, which were not developing
simultaneously and under equal conditions, considering political and
sociological aspects.
The `90s in this region were marked mostly by war, terror and
poverty. The United Nations imposed an embargo against Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
in 1992. This blockade referred both to economic cooperation and to
alienation of Belgrade
representatives from all international political institutions and to
cultural affairs. In such an isolated society as ours used to be, a
certain number of artists of younger and middle-aged generation that had
won recognition between the `80s and `90s and before, was trying to keep
the independence of art through a self-confident and sincere work. On the
other side, a "strong break of extreme localism" was felt.
In the mid-nineties (1995) The United Nations lifted the sanctions
and intensified their support to individuals, opposition political
parties, non-governmental sector, independent media, institutions and
organizations that were loyal to the reformation program. In unfavorable
socio-political and cultural circumstances in the country, the position
that the UN and the USA took, enabled several newly formed galleries and
institutions to develop an intensive artistic practice (The Zvono
Gallery, The Remont Gallery, CZKD, Soros…), apart from the galleries and
festival exhibitions that had already existed (SCK, DOB, KCB, Biannual
Exhibition of Visual Arts in Pančevo, Biannual Exhibition of Young
Artists in Vršac…).
In the second half of the last decade of previous century, since
general civil protest 1996-97, Serbia was again coming under
various blockades imposed by international organizations. People's
consciousness of isolation, helplessness, danger, imperiled existence,
produced a state of anxiety, self-observation and reconsideration. These
circumstances produced certain tensions which led to solution, and which
were, in artistic practice, given a character of strong and expressive
weakness of time; the flow of suppressed, personal, intimate, emotional
and subconscious feelings tends to be freed from such a helplessness and
isolation, and, after socio-political and, consequently, cultural
changes, to speak in a different language… After 2000, the state was
again admitted to almost all international institutions, and the embargo
was lifted.
Between the 20th and 21st century, the phenomenon of management in
art was particularly emphasized. The last decade of the `90s was marked
by simultaneous processes of integration of Western and fragmentation of Eastern Europe. These two processes are indivisible
and interdependent: while integration strengthens international
interests, fragmentation is primarily based on the idea of national
self-sufficiency, and by rapprochement of the territories on this basis,
the fragmentation is also based on the elements of integration. After
this process of geopolitical restructuring of Europe, which was marked in
our region by a period of hard and isolated nineties, there came a period
of reintegration both of Serbia and larger parts of the Balkans into
European and global currents.
In geopolitical sense, the reintegration means to Eastern Europe a
tendency, an intention for integration into Western
Europe, which is conditioned by political and economic, as
well as national, religious, cultural and other interests and technology.
The idea of integration includes a necessary setting into a certain
context, which is manifested in art by return of Belgrade and Balkans artistic scene in
modern global currents. The period of unification was for our artistic
scene a period of dictated art, an art which lived up to the expectations
of a trendy global art market, which primarily refer to
"exotic" themes and integration phenomena, reconsidering and
establishing of identity in this region, the multiethnic, transition,
relapses of racism, hate and a compulsory use of new technology. In order
to achieve this aim, a profitable and ephemeral, dialectical art was
being stimulated and supported. It had a monopoly over young and
"reintegrated" Serbia
on the international artistic scene. At the same time, a sincere and
self-confident art lasted spontaneously, revived by the new generation of
artists that did not speak about social and political circumstances under
which it grew up from the position of a southeastern artist (if economic
position is neglected), but of an artist who became integrated into
different cultural contexts owing to his education-in New York,
Amsterdam, Vienna, Brussels, Stuttgart-and his active participation in
both one-man and group exhibitions abroad, the number of which has been
growing lately-England, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Romania, the
USA, France, Poland, Israel, China, Slovenia, the Republic of South
Africa, Finland, Italy…
The process of globalization, information technologies and social
phenomena have never before had such a marked impact on art as they have
nowadays. Nevertheless, such circumstances do not have to cause the
disappearance neither of the autonomy of art nor of its local and
national identity. On the contrary, by treating the phenomena from this
position, art analyses and reconsiders, speaks about different global
phenomena in a critical way, containing local characteristics, peculiar
qualities of national cultural ambience and heritage. According to that,
the cultural policy, which stands above international and supranational
organizations and states, includes at the same time a decentralized,
regional art and culture within the states.
Our everyday life is a basis for artistic shaping, as it has always
been in the history of art. Nowadays, it is designed by science and
technology, i.e. media, networking, speed …, that produce a
pseudo-reality, virtual reality of the media - kinds of reality
substitutes. By recycling the existing pictures of such a reality, art concerned
with the means of communication and propaganda, using its own messages,
often reconsidering the consequences of the picture of reality illusions.
The media and their propaganda, a media war and their networking,
have marked the last decade both in our country and abroad. Ivan
Grubanov, Vladimir Radišic, Dejan Kaludjerović, Siniša Ilić and
Nikola Pešić have different approach to the problems of the mass
media.
Since his earliest works, Dejan Kaludjerović has been
concerned with the mass media through a drawing, painting, photo and
print. Since his earliest works, children have been the light motif,
mostly taken from fashion magazines of the seventies which use children's
faces for commercial purposes. Those were the years when younger
population and modern generation of artists were born. By analyzing and
reconsidering the messages communicated by these pictures and
manipulating a child's face according to a certain pattern, the artist
sets the question of responsibility for our future and for the future of
children in general, through a series of works The Future Belongs to Us I
and The Future Belongs to Us II. These two series of works were created
between 2002, during his postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts
in Belgrade and an upper course at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna 2003-2004.
The picture exhibited at this show, Bite the Carrot, Bunny! (2004), also
belongs to the series of works The Future Belongs to Us I.
By setting the question based on the relation between the past and
the present - a relation which is noticed in almost all Dejan
Kaludjerović`s works, since Genocide
(1999) and all works created after the year 2000, shown at the exhibition
Atlas and works What Did Tomorrow Brings Us? and Europoly - the artist wants,
through stereotypical pictures of young people, i.e. a child's face as a
product of social market made by the mass media, a picture of a boy's
muscular body, Golden Boy
(2002) / Silver boy PVC (2002)
/ Die Drei Indianer (2005), to
speak about a propagandistic role of the mass media as ideological
instruments which contribute to the development of a general hypocrisy of
the society. He intended to stimulate one to reflect and to warn about a
deviant development of collective consciousness and behavior patterns, which
are nowadays, as never before, intensified by violence, conflicts and
war.
The power of propaganda is highlighted by a television set wrapped
in camouflage canvas and armed with ammunition, a part of the work Genocide (1999), which testifies
about media war in the Balkans during the nineties.
On the other side, through the pictures that show boys in
homoerotic poses, painted in deep red and golden colors (Silver Boy, 2004; Strawberry Boy, 2002), or a girl
with her head drooping (Red Girl,
2004), as well as through the series of works Future Belongs to Us II and
picture Bite the Carrot, Bunny!,
Kaludjerović points to a phenomenon of extremely perverted forms of
sexuality which is manifested through the growth of children prostitution
on global level, but at first pedophilia as a social phenomenon that even
the most saintly persons have become familiar with. By reformulating a
picture and sampling a motif, the artist creates his own picture of
propaganda, which draws the onlooker in and stimulates him to think over
the responsibility that society has for the future and that it has to be
aware of. If it would be possible to draw some analogies then, in the
method of transforming the photos from fashion magazines and in the
message that these pictures communicate through perversity, well hidden
but always present, these analogies could be found in works of Sigmar
Polke and especially the actual painting of Marlene Dumas.
At the beginning of the 21st century, art is concerned with
reconsidering and analyzing the whole heritage left by the last decade of
the 20th century, characterized by geopolitical restructuring of Europe, technological development and the mass
media, which had intensive propagandistic activities. This period was
characterized by a general hypocrisy on economic, political and social
level. Specific circumstances in the Balkans, which during the 1990s were
socially and economically difficult, produced a state of a vacuum where
younger generation of artists, that are now leaving the academies, in so
politicized and partly integrated Serbia, has found itself in
aesthetic and aphasic state of being, just as the art here has. The time
of profitable Serbian art and artists has gone. We hope that we are on
the doorstep of the period of revitalization and reanimation, as well as
valorization of artistic values. In such the circumstances, the artists
gathered around this project are dealing with wider cultural context
treating the phenomena and features of global social movements. Art in
the first years of the 21st century would be best described as reaction
and problematisation of the mass media, art as a medial culture that
needs to recycle, imitate, copy and reconsider the reality and newer
history, trying, maybe, to read certain visions in a new way, analyzing
their contents.
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