Mladen Stilinovic Opening at eflux

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Installation shot of Autocensorship from “Mladen Stilinović: Zero for Conduct; A retrospective,” 2013

I loved seeing that eflux in NYC has an exhibition opening of the Croatian avant-garde artist this Friday, because his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb was a fantastic show. I wrote about the retrospective here, and specifically about the artist’s books on view here.

Image from Artist at Work, 1977

Image from Artist at Work, 1977

Artists are stereotypical bohemians who create when inspired, rather than being industrious citizens, and the photograph above is from his seminal series The Artist At Work, which shows Stilinovic sleeping and lounging in bed. This is not an unpoliticized act, or mere commentary on such stereotypes, as Stilinovic suggests in his text “In Praise of Laziness.”

An Artist Who Cannot Speak English, 1994

An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist, 1994

The eflux exhibition is up through May 31, but at the opening this Friday the artist will be in conversation with Ana Janevski and Dan Byers. Based on his witty, ironic written texts, such as materialized in the more recent work above, I imagine it will be an interesting conversation if you are in New York.

Process and Play: Alem Korkut

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In this temporary exhibition at the Split Art Gallery, the elements of process and play in Alem Korkut‘s work came to the forefront. The installation of slingshots, above, are at once reminiscent of childhood games and of walking through landmines. In addition to the playfulness on display, Korkut, currently living and working in Zagreb, also notably uses new media in his sculptural and installation artwork.

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I also enjoyed his merging of video and drawing, both in Birds and in Vibradrawings. In both, the end result is the product of traces of things, be they birds or chalkballs, and the course chartered is one of chance, not predetermined by the artist.

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His drawings also highlight process and sequence. Above, a series of photographs taken from a 360-degree point of view of a city square are mirrored by his chalk drawings below. The sheer number of images suggest a full, time-aware narration of the scene, almost like a film. The graphite sketches below also build on each other sequentially. In the first installation image, the drawings are in a linear row where each selects a landscape element to finally form a composite image. Beyond the row of them in the next gallery, you can see a large woodcut of the final composition of this artfully composed scene.

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