A guest blog from Dagmar Meneghello.
FAMOUS CONCEPTUAL ARTIST FROM VOJVODINA ŽIVKO GROZDANIĆ GERA AFTER 30 YEARS BACK ON PALMIŽANA
10 May – 1 June 2016 Terrace Meneghello
DRAWINGS FROM HEAVEN OR ALLEGORY OF HEAVEN
“The artist is no longer a mere spectator of history, he is a kind of politician. He reacts in an area that politicians are ruined. If in his work does not involve the society, the media, politics and people to which it refers – then the work is not done it why it was created. “
Known Vojvodina artist Gera Grozdanić born 1957., sculptor and painter opens May 10th Summer Art festival Palmižana 2016 whit his exhibition “Drawings from heaven or allegory of paradise”. This is a great return to the region after 30 years. In the eighties Živko Gera Grozdanić, who in 1983 graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo in the class of Ljubomir Perčinlić, lived in the town of Hvar and often exhibited in Adriatic galleries as well as in Hvar or in gallery of Palmizana “Scorpio”, which is continuously active since 1980.
The theme of this ArtSummerPalmižana 2016 is – “In the Land of the Cactus, Peacocks and Sirens and other Allegories”.
The series of works, 40 drawings of small format, made on paper substrates used as filters for wine incurred on Hvar, in Palmižana, apparently showing lack of respect for the place of origin and context of the place. So, drawings or objects? Or just a small intimate records on interesting surfaces. Damaged from wine fermentation? If the visual elements of art try to decipher a sign, that is, as a language, then the content of the text in the drawings introduces a sensitive observer in an interesting world events, related memories,and auras portraits of unknown figures and engravings of mechanical devices at the beginning of the twentieth century. The way of concluding form of drawings, and their narratives, shows that the intention was to foster damage and accidental chemical aging process substrate-filter and their discreet introduction to dialogue with android set of portraits and man.
Any comparison of drawings with contemporary art, or comparison of symbolism Hvar’s drawings with the previous artistic practice Zivko Grozdanića is unnecessary and impossible. Zivko Grozdanić used his art as a tool to find the “gray areas” in history, indicating the intensity of each entropy of society .
However, in these works “FROM HEAVEN” is the dominant narrative, story, allegory, emotion and expression drawing pen, which intervenes on collaged surfaces.
But what is Palmizana? Paradise or just a small clip of a large paradise? Maybe it’s just an illusion of paradise or the Palmižana allegory of paradise? Why would an artist do drawings in heaven? This may be the reason of taking a pen and scribbling on the paper surface. Are this drawings from paradise? And so on…and so on. We can ask a thousand questions. But we will not get an answer that would be true.
The artist and Paradise, their travel in all directions, up in the future, down in the past, left to happiness, right in the passion … Name of the installation of 40 drawings – “Allegory of paradise”, is a collection of mood, everyday process of drawing that shows the idea heaven in the form of Palmižana.
And shows our artist who in the heaven ,with a pencil in his hand, draws scenes “out of heaven” scenes entropy of the world that is inhabited by “devils and demons”. The artist used the privilege of drawing in paradise as a paradox, he brings to Eden scenes of hell … recycle them in a diary, entry in a kind of paradigm, an example that shows how to recycle the chaos of everyday life.
Known controversial and radical Vojvodina artist, conceptualist and performer Grozdanić Živko Gera exhibited in the past in numerous Croatian galleries. Before the war he took part in Rijeka at the XIII Biennial of Young with the cycle Kiefer-Knifer which strongly opposes nationalist politics and the politics of Slobodan Milosevic. Disappointed events in his country Grozdanić chooses and “appropriated” work of the two formally quite different painters at the end of the twentieth century and this – engaged German painter Anselm Kiefer who for years dealt with the responsibility of his people for the Holocaust, and in that paitings he put the meanders of Croatian artist Julija Knifer which was scared of the size of national euphoria, retired : “Art is my only asyllum, my refuge”.
“This is a painting- performance with an eclectic character,” says art theorist Mike Šuvaković for that cycle, which the artist re-explore these years and shall show in autumn exhibitions at the terrace of the Meneghello Palmižana in honor of the return to his artistic beginnings. / Last year he showed some of his work in “Corković place” and great group exhibitions “ From Canada to China” in Villa Meneghello, both in Hvar./
In the cycle “Meteor Shower” Grozdanić calls into question the role of church in democratic change and got a lot of problems. This year’s Performance “Allegory of the Prime Minister” – breaking twenty bust with the image of the current Serbian Prime Minister – did not get the public space, but it is done in his backyard in a village near Vrsac. Grozfdanić “ I do not mean the current Prime Minister, the problem arises when the chosen man take a roll of Prime Minister and completely change, under the influence of power our politicians forget why they were elected.”
“Presentation of works such as this, which is de facto a kind of showing political stance that can not pass. Passes only art that produces aesthetic objects, but when it comes to presentation of art that produces attitudes, then that is a big problem. It is impossible to do art as a kind of “whistleblowers” of citizens. The artist has to “inform on” society from time and history and to report through the powerful log called art history. Institutions should support the culture , but they are bureaucratic and today completely numb. We are at a shocking return of the crisis of 90s. “when our society was not ready to choose identity , the right path to modernity and democracy.
Gera Grozdanić invested enormous work in the art world, in Vojvodina’s cultural initiative. He founded several cultural magazine, “Košava” and “Artkontekst” and founded the Festival Youth Biennial in Vršac , (1994th to 2004th ), one of the most important events of the late 20th century in these areas . They have ceased to exist because the state cultural institutions were completely uninterested.
Grozdanić was the head of Museum of Contemporary Art in Novi Sad, from 2005 to 2011., and in this time that Museum was alive and modern institution. Grozdanic was also the curator of the Venice Biennale and at that year Serbian pavilion won and received the award.
At the same time this spring as his perfomance “Allegory of the Premiere ” was banned, his monumental monument erected recently with the help of Serbian Ministry of Culture and the Gallery “Nadezda Petrovic” in public space of town Čačak. – three huge rusty hammers.
“This is an idea to open a kind of discourse analysis of one case in a public space that normally serve for everyday use. Everyone owns it, everyone is working with him, but here used to the idea of contemporary art which, above all, trying to make some kind of acupuncture public field, and bring art into everyday life. – Explains the artist.
Photos :Andrej Šaprić
