[spectre] Exhibition, Recycle The Future!, May 5th - May 30th 2010

[galerija galzenica]

" Recycle The Future! "

May 5th - May 30th 2010 in Galzenica Gallery at 8 p.m.

Aleksandrija Ajdukovic (SR), Paul Matosic (GB), Tonka Malekovic (HR) and 
Tanja Perisic (HR)

Artists’ talk will be held at the gallery on the day of the exhibition, 
May 5th, beginning at 6 p.m. The talk will be recorded and available in 
audio format at http://galzenica.posterous.com/

---

When in a recent interview Umberto Eco was asked about the size of his 
private library, he said that he throws away most of the books he 
receives as a gift or those he doesn't need any more. However, for the 
post-war welfare state generation this behaviour of the noted Italian 
writer would have seemed quite outrageous. Up until recently, to treat 
items of high culture as nondurable goods meant that you were either 
totally economically irresponsible or that you obviously had utter 
contempt for humanist culture in general. Merging of economic and 
cultural capital – a practice that began in the second half of the 20th 
century – is still very productive, especially in the field of museum 
institutions and the associated idea of the original work of art, or the 
concept of master-piece.

But it is clear that the flow of contemporary cultural capital is 
different today. Without analysing the reasons for this change, the 
present situation can be shortly explained in this way: the humanist 
culture – until recently being a privileged working field that served as 
a symbolic capital of a certain society – became yet another economic 
sector, next to tourism, entertainment industry and sport. In another 
words, there is more writing, reading and publishing today than ever 
before; more painting, performing and exhibitions; more music and 
theatre performances. When this is supplemented by further so called 
primary sector production growth, it isn’t hard to conclude that that 
the majority of our everyday activities are aimed at managing abundance 
of goods.

Ecological aspect of that management is the subject of the joint work by 
Paul Matosic and Tonka Malekovic. Similar to their previous art 
practice, they work with discarded materials and items. This time 
Matosic and Malekovic are using obsolete and disposed computer 
equipment. The artists will treat the distribution seting up of the 
objects in the gallery space as a site-specific installation. In a 
direct physical/tactile contact with a large amount of waste, the public 
is invited to comprehend the ratio of contemporary production of goods.

Aleksandrija Ajdukovic, on the other hand, is interested in commodity 
market. Citizens of the Republic of Serbia – or, more precisely, Chinese 
immigrants on the one hand, and the domicile population on the other – 
were asked to advertise a nonexistent Chinese detergent in a specific 
commercial manner. By juxtaposing national stereotypes and advertising 
strategies the artist points to the ridiculous aspect of the global 
market. Tanja Perisic’s photo montages deal with the problem of the 
future social development based on unlimited production and consumption 
of topics. Nowadays the awareness of unsustainability of this kind 
social development is manifested in different ways: from the economical 
- or political - critique of neoliberal capitalism, through discovery of 
new, green sources of energy, to alternative ways of living . It seems 
to us that this very atmosphere of the immanent end of one phase of 
social development, i.e. one civilization focused on appropriation of 
human labour and nature, is best presented in the dystopian landscapes 
of Tanja Perisic. (K.Stefancic)

---

Aleksandrija Ajdukovic was born in Osijek in 1975. She graduated from 
the Braća Karic Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrdae (Department of 
Photography). She is currently attending a post-graduate 
interdisciplinary study at the University of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She 
has received the Photography Award at the 2004 October Salon in Belgrade 
and the 2005 Young Talents Henkel Award. 
<ajdukovic.aleksandrija at gmail.com>

Tonka Malekovic was born in Zagreb. In 2006 she graduated from the 
Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Since 2003 she has been exhibiting at 
solo and group shows in Croatia and abroad. She has received several 
artist scholarships and residencies, as well as the 2007 ESSL Award and 
the 2009 Zagreb Salon Award. This year she has been elected as finalist 
of the Radoslav Putar Award. She lives and works in Zagreb. 
<tonkapalonka at gmail.com>

Paul Matosic has been present on the art scene of the United Kingdom, 
continental Europe and North America over three decades. He has been 
active in many artistic fields (performance, film, sculpture, 
site-specific installations, curating, etc), and was a lecturer at many 
art academies for a number of years. He received five art awards for his 
work. <http://www.matosic.org.uk/artist.htm>

Tanja Perisic graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2006. 
She is currently attending a post-graduate study at the Piet Zwart 
Institute in Rotterdam. She has received a number of awards for her work 
and attended several artist residencies in Austria, Belgium, Germany. 
She mostly exhibited in Croatia, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands. Her 
work has mainly been focused on the correlation between technology, the 
body and its surrounding space.
<http://www.tanja-perisic.com>

Curators: Sanja Horvatincic, Nina Pisk, Klaudio Stefancic

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