[spectre] Open call for participation in Galery Galzenica's annual program in 2011

[galerija galzenica]

It seems that the traditional division between fine and applied arts is 
still significant. This flexible yet constant dividing line is 
consistently being drawn even today, when most of the methods we have 
used so far to make this division are not considered efficient anymore. 
For example, recognizing different modelling procedures is not 
sufficient to determine the artistic status of a certain object or 
product. This also applies to the nature of social activism organized 
around a well-shaped aesthetic object or event, since political struggle 
more and more frequently takes place in the cultural sphere. 
Furthermore, it has never been more difficult to label an object or a 
phenomenon as art based only on its intertextuality, since the 
institution of art has become ever more complex, progressively implying 
a greater number of cultural practices.

Following the change in production, the difference between functional 
and non-functional objects is not as simple as it was at the turn of the 
20th century, when, in the wake of the first industrial revolution, an 
organized struggle was started by artists who actively wanted to 
participate in making social decisions. Moreover, it has not just become 
more difficult to determine the line between design and fine arts, but 
it also seems – as Hal Foster claims in his book „Design and Crime“ – 
that in the recent, so-called post-industrial revolution, almost 
everything is done according to design principles. Foster claims that 
this omnipresence of design in contemporary society is the symbol of the 
triumph of industrial culture which has profited out of the emancipatory 
projects of avant-garde art.

Foster refers to two pioneers of Viennese modernism, Adolf Loos and Karl 
Kraus, in order to emphasize the necessary distinction between design 
and art. Paraphrasing Kraus, he claims that a designer transforms art 
(an urn) into a functional object (chamber pot), while functional 
modernists transform functional object (chamber pot) into art (urn). 
Both cases represent totalitarian practices that do not allow for any 
critical thinking. Foster therefore concludes that, although autonomous 
art is a modernist illusion, we still need the „freedom space” which is 
to be found somewhere between the two extremes.

Following this line of thought, we invite you to participate with your 
works, proposals and curatorial concepts in the process of creating 
Gallery Galženica's program for 2011. Please send your on-line 
applications to galzenica at gmail.com by July 1st, 2010.

Based on the received proposals the curators of the gallery (Klaudio 
Štefančić, Sanja Horvatinčić and Nina Pisk) will make the program for 
2011 which will be announced by July 15th, 2010.

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Pučko otvoreno učilište Velika Gorica
GALERIJA GALŽENICA
Trg Stjepana Radića 5
HR - 10410 Velika Gorica
tel:+385 1 6221 122 /  fax: 6226 740
www.galerijagalzenica.info