AN EXHIBITION WITH MARKO TADIĆ

Some months ago Marko asked me if I would participate in his artist book collaboration series. I was honored and immediately said yes. It seemed like a perfect combination between my own practice regarding printed matter (of which I am sure but not certain Marko is aware of in fullest, since we never really discussed my work) and my adoration of Marko’s drawings /collages.

His work was for the first time introduced to me at the 28th Biennial of Graphic arts in Ljubljana in 2009 and even back then I remember I was taken by how precisely he tackled social / historic issues of his immediate environment through fragile and intimate almost illustrative drawings on blue envelopes arranged in a bigger composition. As if each envelope (blue color envelopes refer to administrative post of the former republic of Yugoslavia) is an individual citizen’s message and only as a group our ‘true’ story / history can be told.

The book I received from Marko is 18 x 25,8 cm, it has orange hard covers and it includes 38 drawings by Marko, but also somehow equal amount of empty pages. Since I was about to leave for a residency in New York and an exhibition in Hong Kong before returning to Brussels I decided to take our book with me on this month and a half trip half way around the world.

During my travels and residency I observed the drawings of Marko and tried to understand why he send me these particular images / stories. Somehow this analysis became the primary focus of my part of the collaboration so I started translating his images into words eventually giving them titles.

I have written the titles by collaging words from newspapers I have collected on my travels, more precisely the words are taken from reviews of art exhibitions from newspapers such as New York Times and Washington Post…

At this point after being given a chance to exhibit at Superdeals I have decided to take Marko’s drawings out of the book and exhibit / expand them in the gallery space. This way I hope to explore subjects of relationship between different positions and formats. Is an artist today as well a curator, producer or a critic? What is the relationship between a catalogue and an artist book? When is a book an exhibition?

I would like to thank Marko Tadić and I hope he is not too angry, just a little bit, since I torn his book a part.