Catalog
The Net of Choises
In order to pursue collaboration with the Hungarian art scene that commenced last year and resulted with an exhibition of Hungarian artists in Belgrade[1], Belgrade curators Mara Prohaska Marković and Maida Gruden have organized an exhibition and guest visit of Serbian artists to Budapest this year. The curators’ intention is not to give a comprehensive survey of Serbian contemporary art, but to call attention to certain art protagonists and their productions, via selection of several artists who are introducing themselves with works of their own choice. Category of choice in this instant turned out to be an essential conception. Consciously intending to renounce initial, firm concept that would, from curator’s point determine choice of works and limit the scope of their reception, has enabled different communications and interactions to become visible at the very exhibition through the network of choices. Moving in the field that would in its extreme provide new insights and surprises resulted in exhibition by six artists in different media that can be interpreted in many ways. One of the possible ways to identify and observe these individual choices follows:
Exhibition Hungarian Games was held in the gallery Yubin in Belgrade in November 2006 as a part of the Festival of Hungarian culture. After a five-day visiting program to Budapest, where they were invited by The Agency for Contemporary Art Exchange, curators Mara Prohaska and Maida Gruden have organized an exhibition in Belgrade where they have presented works by four Hungarian artists: Andras Ravasza, Marcell Esterhazya, Andree Schneemeir i Szabolcs KissPala.
Binominal artist-curator is the subject of Jemesdin’s work Steaks with garlic, cheese and egg pie and Hackney-carriage goulash that was made especially for this exhibition. A review of that relation was presented through a dominant discourse about the key actors at the contemporary art scene: via dirty fight of opposed sides. Brought to extremes through Jemesdin’s work, this discourse, countering the issue of dominance, is questioning power, hierarchy and position of the artists and curators in a clever way. Opposed sides each operate from their own scope, an own perspective devoid of need to reconsider positions which they emit their “super powers” from. Conflicting opinions and the potential of constructive criticism disappear and scatter by means of this dichotomy model, while the work points to necessity of different discourse establishing and multi-channel correlation between active participants of the contemporary art scene in order to realize cooperation with positive outcome for everyone involved.
The drawings by Dimitrije Tadić Hold Me and Control Me, with its title alone relegate to situations of ultimate surrender to someone else in erotic relation. Therefore main motives of these works are fetishistic objects of sadomasochistic rituals: leather gloves, bangles with metal spikes, chains, shackles and sticks, while the body is given in fragments, speckled with the web of blood vessels that instill in excited heart. No matter how extreme it looked like, in the essence of this ritual relation model exist consensual relations based on negotiation, thrilling and voluntary behavior where the active participants with instinctive clarity understand the concept of responsibility and trust. Exciting scripts of the intimate rituals occur inside micro surrounding, suggested by an intimate drawing technique which Tadić’s works are executed in. However, newspaper groundwork with text broadens the scope of reception, introducing macro-social context into the game. In such a way, subtle deliberation revives negotiation necessity of own and someone else’s needs, limits and anxieties, experiencing deeply intimate contact and thrill that derives from social interaction.
Maja Obradović in series of works Beards, through different media, explores the world from the male viewpoint – the phenomenon of the male look. The images from this cycle represent certain documents of the encounters with men and note conditions in which she was in after those investigative character encounters. Primary subject of her interests becomes relation between man and woman, but at the same time it is also a comprehension of the notion and the role of the woman in examinee’s point of view. Woman / author / artist, whose contorted idea in these works permanently crops up, is always in troubled state of mind because of the illness, exhaustion, underestimation, shakiness, exhaustion, resignation, feeling of jeopardy. However, these self-portraits have not been defined by male attitudes, but emotion emanated from female insight in its role within a differently structured aspect.
In three Six-way Stories, Maja Josifović is in a fairytale-like and imaginative atmosphere binding motives from the world of the child and world of the grown man into the structure of toy. Pervading perfectly, these worlds coexist, exist at the same time, subsist together. What’s more, they suggest position where the model of conduct in the game is not a grown man, but a child. In such a way, given the insight to game of bricks, it does not only impel interaction and a call to play, but it arouses and revives a child in each grown viewer. The artist refers everyone back to their first experiences of forgotten places holding real reasons, sources and motives of present-day actions, behavior, attitudes and approach to life with this short-lived sojourn of the adult in the infantile.
Evoking medieval models of fidelity preserving, Milica Ružičić creates phallus form of the chastity belt. Simulating solid materials and crude manufacture techniques of these medieval devices, the artist manages, with retro design and handwork, to segregate this item in rich production of modern sex toys. At the same time, in a very simple, witty and intelligent manner she twists the primary purpose, function and utility of these devices. With a cynical approach, the artist sets the idea of preserved male fidelity in frames of female sexual fantasies and her fetishes, which, paradoxically, the stereotype of chastity belt, as the symbol of female subordination, transforms into the symbol of liberated female sexuality.
Travel guides by Goran Micevski comprise of series of urban and nature landscape photographs that artist took on his travels to different parts of the world. Considering the context of the guide that these works connote, selected readings introduced as comments, written directly in each photograph, should familiarize the viewer with the distant sceneries. An institution of the signpost is not being brought together only with the real, recorded travel sights, but it also points to what is written in the essence of the media of photography, to the shortage that requires a certain adjunct, to the signpost for the picture use. Textual comments, however, represent sentences extracted from conversations, book quotations, fragments of memories, and comprise the viewer in some inter-subjective networks, into very production of the meaning, but at the same time, into the register of different institutions and follow-up ideologies. Thus for example, In Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, you will most likely feel dizzy due to the height illness.Another important aspect of this exhibition that should be pointed out is live presence of all The Net of Choices exhibitors in Budapest who will be given a chance, via direct communication with participants of the Hungarian contemporary art scene, to create a network of choices of the potential future collaboration and experience exchange.
[1]Exhibition Hungarian Games was held in the gallery Yubin in Belgrade in November 2006 as a part of the Festival of Hungarian culture. After a five-day visiting program to Budapest, where they were invited by The Agency for Contemporary Art Exchange, curators Mara Prohaska and Maida Gruden have organized an exhibition in Belgrade where they have presented works by four Hungarian artists: Andras Ravasza, Marcell Esterhazya, Andree Schneemeir i Szabolcs KissPala.