Two series of works that Antun Maracic is now exhibiting – Cro Car Crash Chronicle, after War/hol (Galerija prosirenih medija) and Roadside Monuments (Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery) – came into being independently of each other. Roadside Monuments were, as the artist himself claims, conceived earlier, extensively, without firm plan or purpose. “It was the motif that attracted me, as well as some others. Every now and then, when I chanced upon a certain case, I would take photographs and in time these photos accumulated. They were recognized as a ‘legitimate’ motif much later than already exhibited series Cro Car Crash… When the opportunity offered to exhibit simultaneously in two galleries in Zagreb, I ‘discovered’ the compatibility of these two motifs and media, their completion and supplement”, says the artist. “Therefore I have purposely photographed more cases, mostly in the area of Dubrovnik.”
The series Cro Car Crash Chronicle, after War/hol is part of Maracic’s greater cycle Appropriated Images where the artist extracts and graphically represents journalistic photographs of places and objects connected to a crime or accident. The piece contains a series of scanned, enlarged and digitally printed A5 photographs from daily newspapers, showing car crashes. These prints, placed one after another, assemble a band, a frieze that runs across the whole available wall of the gallery, representing the ceaseless process of catastrophe.
The title, Cro Car Crash Chronicle, after War/hol is written in the left upper angle of every single print (photo-graphic), while in the opposite right angle is written one of the days in a week, always in typography of local daily newspapers thus paraphrasing the marking of newspaper pages. The before mentioned syntagm simulates the title and it seems that omitting date and year Maracic aims at disconnection with particular time, thus expressing the continuity of tragic events on roads. In other words, as Natasa Segota Lah previously wrote: “…since Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays… on stock of years are innumerable, anonymous date undoubtedly emphasises the ‘continuum’”.
Underneath the photograph and its integrally scanned and printed journalistic note (for example: “the Peugeot is destroyed in violent crash with the bus”), as in other Maracic’s photo series from the cycle Appropriated Images, the conventional signature is penciled: “E.A.” on the left, “Appropriate Image” in the middle and the artist’s signature on the right. In this case Appropriated Image is also something ambiguous. It relates both to the adoption of journalistic photograph and Warhol’s motif. Herefrom the multifunctional English title of Maracic’s piece is generated. Before all it is the extended paraphrase of the original title of Warhol’s cycle from the 60’s, precise naming of the new synonym for the motif (chronicle of Croatian car crashes), but also an onomatopoeia of event itself – the sound of crash, overturning, speed and violence of car breaking… The significant headword that follows is a pun that suggests the citation in the piece, but also the local particularity of the recent war in Croatia. Splitting the artist’s name creates the ambiguity that suggests not only the artistic precedent (by Warhol), but also the time of the event (after the war), i.e. the peacetime continuity of the tragedy. Almost half a century after the Warhol’s cycle Car Crashes (1962/63) Croatia is coming seriously close to the American “standard” of car crash incidents (the death toll is almost not that high even in the USA). “It is obsessive daily peacetime killing on the roads (after War), daily slaughter and crashing without break, pause, rest, cessation. There is no vacation, holiday, time of abstinence… Every day, every day, non-stop”, says Maracic.
This continuity is what the artist wants to emphasize by densely linking prints-graphics that flow in circle around the whole gallery space, interrupted only by the void of gallery entrance. In this way the dimensions of photographs were unified, to create the flat line and achieve the monotony. It also expresses the artist’s fascination with everyday slaughter as the integral part of life; these gallows that became inclusive in collective consciousness, something that is scarcely discussed, something unavoidable and continuous that is legitimately included in our civilization program. It is the fascination with our consent to this given condition, something like a general kamikaze-psychology and deadly routine.
Technically, a blurred print is a counterpart to the unrecognizability of a smashed former car, it establishes the idea or irregularity. It also shows an interesting mode of representation of time and its continuity: through accident, line of convulsion, distress, civilized destruction… Persistent signing of all these numerous cases means apostrophizing every single event, stopping by every scene of the tragedy. “Something like a warning, registration, slowing down until final slow-motion. Countering the scene and the obsession of destructive events happening on the assembly line”, says the artist.
The series Cro Car Crash… does not establish only the global, civilization query, it is not only the bare registration of the phenomena of human destruction. On the contrary, this frieze undoubtedly expresses the artist’s intention to witness symbolically every single story, to be present at every scene of human tragedy. But the obsession with the theme of death – or at least mutilating in a crashed car – also has certain ambiguity. It seems alongside with the reverence Maracic’s particular cynicism is present at the same time, especially emphasized by neat signatures on all prints-graphics of the frieze (was it enough to sign only the first print?). It is additionally apostrophized by the sporadic insertion of color photographs of the latest, glamourously designed high-tech automobiles. Could there be greater cynicism: amongst black and white photos of smashed cars that brought someone to death and others “only” to the invalidity of different degrees, Maracic inserts – like a noise, irregularity, intruder in the monotonous continuity of accidents, almost as disturbing of a steady flow – the images of vehicles that through aggressive marketing promise what in the age of general consumption could only be wished for: modernity, in every way, recent up-to-date design, safety, happiness, comfort, satisfaction, efficiency, performances, dynamics, speed… Furthermore, these shiny, glamourous automobiles are out of time: their representation lacks even the day in week, they are without any other mark but their own, often grotesque, commercial denotation.
In this series Maracic recalls his old theme, Emptied Frames – Vanished Contents, that he is dealing with ever since the beginning of the 90’s, mostly in photographic media and regularly with excellent results. This time the artist, however, does not use the camera, but the ready-made, already reproduced photographs. Nevertheless, the effect is, as Evelina Turkovic says, “essentially identical to one achieved when he uses the camera himself: same sensations, same degree of individuality”.
Roadside Monuments, displayed in Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery, thematically are exquisitely, organically connected not only with the piece displayed in PM, but also Maracic’s previous anthological photo cycles. Namely with Rat-art (October, 1991), the photo series of defensive street structures-sculptures in Zagreb, and No Town And Its Subrealism (December, 1991), created in Nova Gradiska while the city under the frenzied enemy artillery fire lived its “no-variance, its subrealism” and when Maracic concentrated his attention to obituary notices, the dominant motif at the time. Or even more directly to Kill the dead!, the series photographed in 1992. also in Nova Gradiska, when the artist was concerned with the missing tombstone porcelain portrays of the deceased who were, through the process of elimination of memory, trace, evidence, killed again, this time definitely.
As an exceptionally associative and metaphoric series of photographs, Roadside-monuments initiate a variegated discourse upon this above all bizarre motif, spread all over the world. It is a discourse about “fake”, “deficient” graves, monuments without content, private memories on public roads, stopping points at speeding spots, meditative places in midst of general bustle, motley spots on gray roads, bright images of sad occasions, personal sentiments in places where nobody dwells, general memento with individual motive…
In distinction from catastrophe, tragedy, grayness, melancholy and hopelessness of inclusive statistics of daily road slaughter, i.e. blurred prints of newspaper photographs shown in series Cro Car Crash…, Roadside Monuments are, paradoxically, bright images (that the artist emphasizes with their outfit). “In other words, in the context of a gray and monotonous road, where only the passage, speed and lack of consideration are present, consequently beyond the asphalt and uniform road ‘equipment’, these ‘milestones’ are colorful points, plastic and fresh flowers motley. In impersonal alienation of the road, they are small oasis of individuality, regard, emotion… stopping places that offer contemplation, memento of a perished being, bizarre enclaves that suggest peace, that admonish and induce to reflection. In relation to the graves containing physical remnants, these are only symbols of intensified absence of the body, motley shell of previous being. Since they are situated in places where tragedies happened, i.e. regularly in dangerous spots (that caused the accident), they are also, even if this is not their primary function, signs of warning. Likewise, roadside monuments also usurp public spaces for their private-intimate purpose, individualizing a nondescript environment. Sometimes they stage true, complex architectural interventions in places completely unsuitable for building, every now and then they are also quite extensive, with access paths and horticultural arrangements, planted trees… Sometimes they are situated in beautiful view points, overlooking sea, in the distance…”, says the artist.
Both cycles confirm Antun Maracic as one of rare Croatian artists who found the response to the 90’s, whose morphology is not nomadic copying of global trends, but an authentic and original expression that originates from its time and its own environment. Since it deals with important themes and because it is sincere, strong and suggestive and because it is difficult to number all of its multiple layers of meaning, this expression is an open platform on
which everybody may apply his or hers vision of emptiness and absence. And original morphology is becoming emblematic for the general state of recent spirituality and as such is easily deciphered everywhere.
Ivica Župan
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Exhibited Works
Cro Car Crash Chronicle, after War/hol, digital prints on graphic paper, A5 format, 2001-2002.
Roadside Monuments, colour photos, 50×60 cm, 1998-2002.
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Antun Maracic was born on December, 12th 1950 in Nova Gradiska. In 1971 he graduated from the Teaching College (visual arts), and in 1976 from Academy for Fine Arts in Zagreb (painting, with Prof. šime Peria). From 1976 to 1979 he collaborated with Master Workshop of Ljubo Ivancic and Nikola Reiser. From 1978 to 1979 he was a member of Artists’ Co-operative Podroom. Since 1981 until today he actively collaborates with Galerija prosirenih medija. From 1987 to 1990 he organized shows in AM-M14f/1-Z Gallery in the informal space of his own home. For a brief period in 1991 he was curator at Studentski Centar Gallery in Zagreb and from 1992 to 1997 at Zvonimir Gallery in Zagreb. From 1998 to 2000 he was curator at Galerija prosirenih medija in Zagreb. Since October 2000 he is director of Art Gallery Dubrovnik.
He lives in Dubrovnik and Zagreb.
Contact.
antun.maracic@zg.t-com.hr
