What, How and for Whom (eds.): Dear Art (2012)

“Dear art,” Mladen Stilinović wrote in 1999, “I am writing you a love letter to cheer you up and encourage you to come and visit me some time”. Always acutely aware of his own complicity and involvement, in his address to art Stilinović intimates a set of troubled, poetic, enigmatic and modest observations on the standing of art in the contemporary world, its reception and distribution. But he also questions the value of art, which far too often is translated exclusively in monetary terms, or as he puts it: “quick manipulation, quick money, quick oblivion”.

As in several previous shows curated by What, How and for Whom/WHW, Dear Art takes its title from a work by Mladen Stilinović, and once again its wager is set on the “classical” exhibition format. Amidst the disillusionment created by the persistent feeling of failure (coming from the fact that attempts for a radical reconfiguration of art and cultural production in general always become almost immediately spectacularized), Dear Art insists on the obstinate repetition of what has become the curatorial method. Obsessed with the interconnectedness of art and politics and plagued by the nature of art’s “inefficiency,” it attempts to ask necessary questions: Why do we still need art, and what is it that we expect to get from art today? What is its promise, and what do we promise it in return? And what happens when this promise is broken, betrayed, and just plain exhausted?

“Dear Art” approaches questions of the artist’s autonomy and art’s necessity through works that deliberately blur the relationship between engagement, self-referentiality and aesthetics. Engaged with a range of contradictory, heterogeneous methods that affirm endurance, endure indecisiveness, face misunderstandings and reassert allegiances, the works included address the ways in which misunderstanding, confusion, regret, possession, appreciation and devaluation, support and solidarity play out in contemporary art practice, and in defining one’s practice in relation to discussions on reconfiguring the field of art and its relationship to the political.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, with texts by Mladen Stilinović, WHW and Stephen Wright, featuring works by Mounira Al Solh & Bassam Ramlawi, Halil Altindere, Rossella Biscotti, Chto delat?, Every Man is a Curator / Jeder Mensch ist ein Kurator. An archive as a tool, Fokus grupa (Iva Kovač & Elvis Krstulović), Siniša Ilić, Sanja Iveković, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Lutz Krüger, Marina Naprushkina, Hila Peleg in collaboration with Tirdad Zolghadr & Anton Vidokle, Cesare Pietroiusti, Public Library (Luka Prinčič, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, Vuk Ćosić), Greg Sholette, Mladen Stilinović, and Wendelien Van Oldenborgh.

Publisher Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, November 2012
56 pages

exhibition (29 November 2012 – 10 February 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Maistrova 3)

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Nam June Paik: Paik on Paper, catalogue (2006) [English/German]

Catalogue for an exhibition of Paik’s works on paper from Peter Wenzel Collection in Museum Bochum, March-May 2006.

Publisher Salon Verlag, Cologne, 2006
ISBN 3897702606, 9783897702608
170 pages
via namjunepaik.eu

publisher

PDF (some images are in low quality)

Nam June Paik: Family of Robot (1986)

The catalogue published for the exhibition of Family of Robot: Mother, Family of Robot: Father, and Connection at the Carl Solway Gallery, Booth 6-125, Chicago International Art Exposition, May 8-13, 1986, Navy Pier, Chicago.

Publisher Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 1986
via heavyindustries.com

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