“The challenge of valuing oneself during
impending adversity has not lessened during the prior 100 years,” Leonard
Everett Fisher noted in his turn of the century evaluation of The Wizard
of Oz in The Horn
Book Magazine. For the last 20 years it is an idea that has informed the
work of conceptual artist Dejan
Kaludjerović. As he has written “My work explores the central
role of image in Western society, the social obsession with fear and violence
and the structure and mechanisms of capitalism; and how the capitalist system
is using and manipulating the images of children, violence and sexuality in the
media.”
Often using children and/or their literature as his protagonists
the Serbian born artist with Austrian citizenship critiques the loss of innocence
forced upon them and us in his videos, installations, photography and painting.
“My work is mainly concerned with
issues of responsibility and manipulation. In other words, the ways through which
mass media, educational systems or family contexts, influence society,” he has
said.
For his 2012 exhibition The Happy Prince Kaludjerović over painted his
2005 work Blue Girls with the 3740 word text from the Oscar Wilde story over
which he painted a playground structure. In a review of the exhibition art
critic Bosko Boskovic
wrote “The decision to use The Happy Prince is not coincidental; it is used as
a metaphor for ideals that are disappearing from our society: friendship for
friendship’s sake, kindness with no expectations and non-premeditated affection.”
Kaludjerović’s 2013 installation Tin Man depicts the Frank Baum character
with an empty swing hanging from one arm and video screen from the other. The 2004
video projected on the screen, No
Fear from Small Animals, shows three kids restaging the scene from a 1980’s advertisement
for children's garments, visible behind them, in which a boy
feeds a carrot to a seated girl. About which art historian Goran Petrović has
written “Initially associated with the carefree childhood (interpreted by way
of the swing), this installation, upon secondary reading, evokes the sensation
of the lack of self-confidence and instability, typical for all the characters
of this novel.”
His current exhibition Conversations –
Azerbaijan at Icheri SheherBaku’s Yay Gallery
until the 19th of January has the latest edition of his ongoing
video project Je suis malade. In this
work Kaludjerović has a pre-adolescent girl perform the 1970’s French hit song of
the same name. Filmed in a dark room, they look lost and lonely, singing about abandonment,
desperation and self-destruction, in a language they do not understand. Their bewilderment and determination is as palpable as it is
endearing. As the show’s curator says “Endearing miniature versions of
politicians making unrealistic promises, using big, bombastic ideological
phrases, media intellectuals giving barely understandable comments on every
subject under the sun, socially conscious celebrities, these kids have learned
early in life that appearance is everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment