Art
Mladen Stilinović and the ‘Poetics of Painting’
Active on the creative scene since the 1960s, Mladen Stilinović is recognized as a leader in the development of conceptual art in Croatia, using collage, photography, painting, found objects, film, and other media to investigate artistic practice and political power.
A founding member of the Group of Six Artists, Stilinović was one of many artists who questioned traditional approaches to exhibiting artwork. Developing what they termed “exhibitions-actions,” the Group of Six sought to bring art into public spaces and encourage audience engagement, which in turn called for increased transparency and public participation on the political level.
During this period, Stilinović was also involved in publishing Maj 75 and created several artist books. These books, often folded into an accordion format, typically contain images of Stilinović’s actions, performances, and installations. Korak gaze/Cotton pad step (1975), for example, compiles photographs of pedestrians walking on (or stepping over) a length of fabric that Stilinović had placed on the sidewalk. Words and phrases feature prominently in his other books, such as Crveno Roza = Red Pink (1979), in which the phrase “even I can do this” is scrawled in red across a pink square.
Even after the Group of Six Artists disbanded in 1981, Stilinović continued to question the politics of power through his work. He is particularly interested in the visual and ideological power of symbols.
Exploitation of the Dead (1984-90), one of his most iconic works, is an ever-changing cycle of 129 individual objects that represent dead “poetics of painting” (specifically Suprematism, Socialist Realism, and Geometric Abstraction) and dead signs and symbols, or symbols that can be associated with death itself – like the cross. The color red, evocative of communism, permeates the work. Each time it is installed, Stilinović changes the relationship and meaning of the objects through their arrangement, and each time, he remembers symbols associated with the past, with dead ideologies.
Stilinović continues to exhibit both locally and internationally: in 2011, several of his artist books were included in the exhibition Scenes from Zagreb: Artists’ Publications from the New Art Practice held at the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building of the Museum of Modern Art. Last year, Zero for Conduct, a retrospective exhibition of Stilinović’s work, was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, and a “succinct retrospective” of his work including Exploitation of the Dead is on view in the Scaife Galleries as part of the 2013 Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh.
An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist (1992)
Pjevaj! (Sing!) (1980)
