CCE Essl Award 2007
Glyptotheque HAZU, Zagreb, CRO
Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg/Vienna A
Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg, D
Wild advertising brings spontaneity to the public space of the city, creates colorful scenes in the city streets, shapes an autonomous space of sharing information. However, it is not recognized by the public as such. The places of wild advertising are seen as dirty and disgraceful, as sources of disease, and legitimacy is reserved for commercial and organized forms of advertising: citylights, billboards, wallscapes, the dimensions of which catch attention, and which convey mostly consumerist messages.
The art installation “Quarantine“ speaks about sterilization of the street, i.e. of the public space. It is connected to the exhibition and art project “Urban composteries – poetic manifesto“ which was held last year at the VN Gallery in Zagreb.
The work “Quarantine“ is my attempt to illustrate the tendency in policies towards the public space, and also to deal with the question of artistic work as a certain space of isolation, i.e. of the quarantin for subversive phenomena within him.
Through the sublimation into an artistic artefact, the phenomenon of wild advertising gets its legitimacy. “Dirty, disgraceful and rejected“ material is closed within sterile plexiglass cubes, which recall glasses of the museum displays.
The exhibited content is organized and modified to fit the model. The cubes are hermetically closed, so there is no danger of getting in touch with “the contaminated” material. (T.M.)
tonka malekovic 