The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

y the text). At his Retrospective (1981), Trbuljak
offers as the main "exhibit" the following sentence:
"I have no wish to show something new or original;
the fact that someone has the possibility to create
an exhibition is more important than what is shown
at the exhibition; this exhibition maintains the con-
tinuity of my work." The exhibited "statement"
deconstructs (ironic subtext!) the ideology of the
modernist myth of the artist/creator who consis-
tently realises, and even ideologically functionalis-
es his "morphological poetics", identifying
with it. This introduces and produces an aber-
ration, an excess, causing the effects through
showing that beyond the aesthetic there are
ethical attitudes, beyond which there are ide-
ological mechanisms of the institutions of cul-
ture in which values and meanings are pro-
duced. The text of the 'statement', therefore,
constructs the context the disturbances in
which the audience perceives exactly through
their own perception and development of
contextual aspects.
Without overstressing the importance of 'crit-
ical idealism', the neoconceptualistic attitude
produced a model of presenting the sociality
and interaction, which developed into a new
'relation form' (Bourriaud), characteristic for
the art of the nineties. The ontological status
of a work in the nineties is, therefore, no
longer determined by the criticism of
autonomous aesthetic form, but rather the
'open' information work, in the sense of open-
ness of the intertextual, intervisual or intermedial
order of information, presenting the functions of
the context in the production of meaning and
sense. In Croatian art, this was particularly support-
ed by the strategies of Dalibor Martinis and Sanja
Ivekovit. In the actual redefinition of the 'open
work', one speaks definitely about the 'post-object
art', the situation created by the reception of
media-powered "transfer" of objects; it challenges
the observer to become the participant of the
event of "transformation and micro-communi-
cation", to participate in it until active mutual-
ity is reached. Of course, this paradigm is
realised in accordance with the mass media
infrastructure of the end of the 20th century,
from the position between criticism and
offer/acceptance of new semantisation of
social reality (centres, margins, transitional
formations, space of individuality, public,
Sanja Ivekoyit
Tragedy of Venus. 1976
close, difference, game etc.). Art, therefore, gains
once again a social function, but without the ideo-
logical weight of large visions of changing the
world, because it functions on the level of frag-
mentary circumstances (city, weekend, flat, studio,
human body, religion, pain. square, sign etc.). In
other words, it shows us how to, without
small or big prejudices. live in the existing
world of reality, even when it is virtual; in that
sense, it continues the struggle of historical
avant-gardes for new ways and models of
action, existence, perception, experimenta-
tion, participation etc., on entirely different
social, philosophical and cultural preceptions.
Like a speculum. the artist catches and exhibits
the traces of the stratification and action of
25j THE MISFITS