Tadej Pogačar: A Thought for the Day
8 – 18 October 2016
Prozori Gallery
Zapoljska 1, Zagreb
We cordially invite you to the opening of the exhibition “A Thought for the Day” by Tadej Pogačar on Saturday, October 8th at 12:00 at the Galerija Prozori, Zagreb.
The work conceived for the Prozori Gallery, Thought for the Day, does not have pronounced subjects for which the artist advocates directly, does not include characteristic interdisciplinarity and participativity, and does not emerge in complex variations as is the case with other works, e.g. CODE:RED that problematizes sexual work in the wide spectre of geographically and socially marked manifestations. This work, however – minimalistic in terms of expression and purified in terms of concept, with methodology appropriated from other communication systems, and directed toward the questioning of aspects of culture and positioning of art within it – is deeply rooted in author’s artistic ethics and aesthetics.
Specifically, the sentence used has been appropriated from Slovene politician Edvard Kardelj, chief strategist and author of all Yugoslav constitutions, spoken at the Congress of the Communist League in Serbia in 1954. It was supposed to signify the willingness of the new Socialist state to turn from the course of Soviet Socialism toward own, more liberal model, and appeal more to the West by following Tito’s remark of the ingratiating lamb that gets to suck on two mother sheep.
Mimicrically inserted in form of graffiti written on a wall i.e. in one of the newspapers in the reading hall, this sentence directly addresses its readers by confusing them with the content that is marginally nonsensical, as well as the unclear and extensive timeframe between its emergence and reproduction. The permeation –or, rather, elusion – of sense and nonsense, contemporaneity and obsolescence, topicality and history, and the possibility of multiple, even contrasted interpretation, iscoincidental to the contemporary, fragmented cultural field and promotes the long-ago uttered platitude into a topical one.