Despite the fact that contemporary art has long overcome modernist dogmas that define art as an autonomous and unreachable object awaiting its contact with the audience within the protected space of the «white cube», and despite the decades old visions of unting art and life, practising art on the streets, outside the frames of art institutions – the experience of working in the field of contemporary art reveals that it still has difficulties in communicating with a broader audience and there is often the impression that its «final consumers» are mainly identical to those who produce it. With the new programmation in 2006, g-mk is looking for a way to try to reverse this situation, taking as a starting point the questioning of its own history, structure and role on the sections of the existing, but then also the possible, coordinates of the art system, urban space and society. The project «Neighbourhood», conceived by the artist Ana Bilankov and gallery director Antonia Majača and realised in the form of a student workshop whith students actively participating in conceptualization and realization of the project, dealt exactly with the gallery’s «stepping out» into its immediate surroundings of the neighbourhood. By deciding to meet the protagonists of other public services in the neighbourhood (bar, restaurant, hairdresser’s shop, car mechanic’s, market etc.), it announcing in a way its presence «next door» and inviting for participation in the galleriy’s activities, as well as the reciprocity in using «services». Researching the amateur art section of the Arts Club Ina and including its members in the project and exhibition at the gallery, the project by Ana Hušman revived the history of the gallery and its relation with the Ina Arts Club, also creating a link between amateur and contemporary arists. Both projects exemplify the attitude that one of the key desired qualities of contemporary institutions is hospitality, as Charles Esche reminds us, referring to Derrida’s concept of hospitality and reminding also of the critical role of isntitutions, as expressed in words by Vito Acconcci: «A gallery could (then) be thought of as a meeting place, a place where a community could be called to order, called to a particular purpose.»[1] One of the problems in (in)communicability of contemporary art today seem to be its remaining alienation, which obviously creates the impression that only the chosen ones are invited to participate.
The work by Mario Čaušić deals exactly with this alienation of art, its «nonporousness» in relation to the public space of a community. Čaušić’s work is based on a simpe reversal of content of two spheres put in opposition, but also communication: the gallery and the street. A video showing street grafitti of violent and vulgar content is set up as an exhibit in the gallery, while the surrounding space of the gallery, i.e. the whole building of Ina at which the gallery is situated, is surrounded by signs with quotes by some of the main protagonists of 20th century art. The signs are put up on lamp posts, simulating traffic signs, adapting themselves with this mimicry to the visual language of the street, but inserting a new content into it: statements by artists offering various definitions of art and artist, ranging from modernist definitions of artist as a transcendent genius to the „Warholian“ ones that offer complete relativizations of such concepts. The quotes are arranged exactly on the priciple of thesis and antithesis, in order to encourage thinking, interest or a reaction.
The form of slogan is another characteristic of these „artistic“ signs that enables them to easily adapt to the rules of urban space. In a society in which public space is more and more privatized, supervised and owned, we are overwhelmed by agressive advertising, political slogans and messages. Sending a message out on the street is neccessarily an effective strategy guaranteed not to „miss“ the recepient, so it is logical that similar methods have been used by many artists and activists and illegal graffiti writing has been an integral part of many revolutions throughout history and actions problematizing a wide range of socio-political issues. Today, however, when grafitti writing is itself tamed and lured into the sphere of „fine arts“, and the public space is more and more privatised, illegal sending out of messages to the world by means of grafitti is often confined to city peripheries and its content to those we see in Čaušić’s video: violence and primitivism.
Like advertising slogans, quotes represent condensed thoughts to which we are often prone to give more meaning and value than they actually possess. Similarly, by its very existence, a quote ensures its author the status of an important personality. Quotes symbolize the need for instant knowledge, quick information, a flash of inspiration, regognition instead of understanding… There are search engines on the Internet dedicated exclusively to quotes, devided according to areas and authors and there are also web sites offering always fresh artists’ quotes to other artists in moments of creative crisis. Even though on the semiotic level artists’ quotes exposed in public space can be viewed as a set of advertising slogans emptied of meaning, here they are not used for propagating a single ideology or perspective on art, but offer the possibility of multiple reading and, maybe, discovering new ways of communication between „art and life“.
Čaušić’s work literally places art (seen as artwork, but also a set of objects that have the task of symbolizing art) onto the street, by which the gallery itself, as a place of production of artistic discourse, receives a renewed visibility. This visibility is manifest not only in the relation of the gallery to the outside space, the passers-by, but also in relation of the gallery to the building in which it is situated – that of the Ina company (the gallery’s corporative sponsor) i.e. to its employees. To what extent are they aware of the existence of the gallery and its program, the fact that it was founded 20 years ago thanks to the very need of the workers for additional cultural content, but also the need of employers for constructing a model of controlling the free time of the workers and their activities? Are they aware of the fact that with their work they also contribute part of the capital for financing contemporary art and what is their opinion on this? The project by Andrea Fraser for the Generali Foundation in Vienna dealt exactly with investigating relations between shareholders, directors and workers of the Generali insurance company and its contemporary art collection. Interviews with the company employees and research into the company’s history reveal very contrasting attitudes towards the Foundation. The owners care about preserving a good image of the company in the public and „ordinary“ workers have often shown indignation for the fact that money is invested into art they don’t even understand instead of into improving their working conditions. There have also been cases of workers’ protests, for example in one case when plants were removed to make place for new artworks set up in the company’s building.[2] By surrounding the Ina building with signs (artists’ quotes) around and on the entrance to the building, the gallery increases its visibility but it also consciounsly „reveals“ and destabilizes itself.
At the same time, the company itself transforms its way of public presentation, manifesting a confusion of sorts or a marketing inconsistency, so instead of the slogan „Ina – life in motion“, the passers-by and the employees run into an analogous form in, e.g. famous remark by Ivan Kožarić: „Art escapes us – this is a constant“, whose content could be understood almost as an ironic comment on advertising slogans offering the illusion that everything can be bought and possessed. On the conrast, some of the artists’ quotes seem so banal that they make us think about how they actually deserved entering into the imaginary museum of „great and original“ thoughts. How is, for example, the statement signed by Henri Matisse „Work is a cure for everything“ (provocatively placed in front of the entrance to the building as a greeting to the employees before going to work) different than similar „everyday“ and anonymous proverbs or the infamous one: „Arbeit macht frei“. Artists’ quotes, monumentalized and modified into traffic signs, like other slogans, are removed from their context and in a way emptied of any content. In such a situation, the primary function of these „art signs“ or signs about/of art becomes communication, manifest as exactly an invitation for creating a possible context. This is in a way a multiple test: for Ina’s employees, the gallery, author of the project, but also the «art proverbs“ themselves and their efforts of catching the „constant escaping of art“.
Ivana Bago
[1] Ch.Esche, «A Possibility Forum – Institutional Change and Modest Proposals», Strategies of Representation 2 & 3, SCCA – Ljubljana, 2004
[2] Sabine Breitwieser (ur.), “Occupying space. Generali Foundation Collection», 2003.
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The work ‘Morning in My Street’, is comprised of the video projection (duration 5’55’) in the space of the gallery & 35 panels – enamel on sheet metal, set around the INA building (along the šubićeva and Martićeva streets)
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Mario Čaušić (1972,Osijek,Croatia).Graduated in 2001 at the Department of Graphic Painting, Academy of Visual Arts, Zagreb. Lives and works in Osijek.
