Reconstructions: private = public = private = public =
(Selection of Works by Croatian Contemporary Artists)
11 - 18 . 10 . 2009 . REX . Belgrade
openinig: Saturday 10 . 10. 2009 . 19 h
Curator: Darko Fritz
Artists: Helena Bulaja . Boris Cvjetanovic . Ivan Faktor . Sanja
Ivekovic . Zeljko Jerman . Andreja Kuluncic . Dalibor Martinis . Edita
Pecotic . Goran Trbuljak . Slaven Tolj
English web site: www.rex.b92.net/private_public
Serbian web site: www.rex.b92.net/privatno_javno
The exhibition 'Reconstructions: private = public = private = public ='
examines the feminist perception from the 1970s: 'the private is the
public' i.e. 'the private is the political' using various positions
selected from Croatian contemporary art since the seventies, and outside
the feminist discourse. The continuity of four decades of creative work
of certain artists, as well as the interaction between the new works of
art and the artistic expression of the 70s, are the focal points of this
exhibition. Jerman's art diary works 'My Year' ('Moja godina') (1977)
and 'My Month' ('Moj Mjesec') (1982), as well as the video artwork 'Make
Up – Make Down' (1978) by Sanja Ivekovic and Goran Trbuljak's posters,
are representative examples of the artistic perception of the
relationship between the private and the public, expressed in a form of
artists' first-person point of view through various media typical of the
1970s 'new art practices' (performance art, text, photography, video
art). Apart from these works which use the artist's own body and/or
personal experience, the exhibition also presents more recent works
created in the era characterized by complex relations established after
the phenomenon of reality TV in the 1990s, the erosion of privacy due to
security measures introduced post September 11, and the ubiquity of
personal audiovisual technologies and their application in online social
networks in recent years. Communication of (non-artistic and mostly
trivial) personal and private content in public places became
commonplace, from passive listening to other people's conversations over
mobile phones in public places to active communication with a large
number of people, like for example within the social network web site
FaceBook, where apart from communication with so-called 'friends' (with
an illusion of being able to freely select people to communicate with)
users legally allow the corporation to use their personal information.
Critical positioning of the personal, on one side, and reconstruction
and recontextualization of historical events and facts, on the other
side, are the tools used by artists to shape new examinations of the
personal and the private. Several of the presented works use the
documentary film form and documentary or archival material.
... The exhibition critically examines the use of communication media as
well as the 'old' and 'new' technologies within the artistic discourse,
ranging from the 'first-person point of view' to the critical analysis
of the relationship between the personal and public space. The starting
media forms of the works of art vary from artists' own bodies
(performance of Slaven Tolj, acting of Sanja Ivekovic, Jerman's
self-portraits) to intimate diary reports and notes (Zeljko Jerman,
Boris Cvjetanovic) to personal comments and statements (Sanja Ivekovic,
Goran Trbuljak). Various forms of public space were used, both physical
and virtual; galleries, urban locations owned by corporations or urban
public areas (Trbuljak's posters, performance by Slaven Tolj), as well
as virtual space like television (Martinis), the Internet (Bulaja) or
the system of city surveillance cameras (Slaven Tolj).
The personal and the public always communicate in both directions and
sometimes (increasingly so) cannot be separated by a clear boundary or
any boundary at all. Relationships between the personal and the private
are dynamically activated in any given time, influenced by the
ever-changing political context and the fluid technological apparatus
used in the role of a mediator, and reinterpreted in various poetic and
objective views in the works of art that have been critically examined.
Darko Fritz
Carried out with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic
of Serbia, City of Belgrade - Secretariat for Culture, Stability Pact
for South Eastern Europe/Goethe Institute Belgrade . Media support: RDP
B92, Vreme, Danas, See Cult
-----------------------------------
REX . Jevrejska 16 . Belgrade . Serbia
tel/fax: + 381.11.3284 534, + 381.11.3284 299 . www.rex.b92.net .
[email protected]
open daily 12 -18 h
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