Tag Archives: An artist who cannot speak English is no artist

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.

Slides and More at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

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Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb

When in Zagreb, I stayed an extra night to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, housed in this new building, which was perhaps not intuitively laid out or well lit in the temporary exhibition spaces, but overall was large and interesting.

Their collection naturally focuses on Croatian artists, and I found their documentation from the Fluxis period–an interest of mine–especially strong. Overall the thematic curation was interrupted by a temporary installation of design pieces of Karim Rashid, complete with big video screen of him talking about his work, which I found distracting and repetitive, seeing as it was on every floor of the permanent collection. There were some outstanding artists from Croatia whose work I really enjoyed getting to see for the first time, including:

Mladen Stilonavic, 1993

 

1950s photography of Zvonimir Brkan, From Liliput and Fisherman

Milislav Mio Vesovic, Photo-sequence of the action “Zagreb, I love you!”

Zlatko Kopljar, K9 Compassion, 2005 (series of 5 photographs where the artist kneels in front of Parliament buildings)

But then, how can you not like a museum that you exit via Carsten Holler’s permanent double slide installation?