30/05/2017
Marko Lulić
THE PROPOSAL
3/6/2017 - 24/7/2017
Curated by Branka Benčić
The exhibition by Marko Lulić The Proposal brings together a short fragmented panorama of Lulić’s practice including works dealing with a various range of media – object, installation, drawings, text and video. The Proposal is based on a series of three loosely connected works – text based drawings referring to the institutions of art, art system and the postion of artist’ work, a vide The Circle (Model of Relations) and object Monument to Movement dealing with the concept of monument by strategies of performance and text.
Strategies of the deconstruction of the concept of monument, architecture and the heritage of modernism in Eastern and Western Europe have been for more than ten years the premise for the artistic practice of Marko Lulić. He is interested in mechanisms of translation and transposition, of the transference of context, the process of alteration of relationships and relocation of meaning. Lulić recreates and reinterprets the heritage of modernism, making use of various materials and media, translates and recontextualises architecture and monuments. He fills spaces and objects with completely new meanings with the help of a shift in the material or the concept, pursuant to formal aspects and cultural, social and political themes. Everything is subject to criticism and interpretation, without bias or nostalgia. The artist demonstrates how with poetic means and not only with direct speech it is possible to achieve social engagement, identification, compassion and political and social sensitivity with scenes that reveal to us the “political potential of the poetic”.
Architecture that is, in the words by Bogdanović unfinished, inchoate, that slips down into the subconscious, seems to find its extension in video works by Marko Lulić, a continuation that is manifested equally in the fluidities indicated by the movement and choreography of the protagonists, by their interpretation as imitation of structures or relationships, and by expressive means of the medium of moving images, with movements of the camera.
Model of Relations (The Circle) does not directly impinge on the monument theme, but does use choreography – the dance movement to express a series of relations. Following the title of the work, its meaning is formed in the dichotomy of the opposed elements, the idea of the universal, and modernism and the opposition to it of something particular and local, visible in the circle dance, the kolo, the tradition of folk art, primitive and simple dance ritual. At the same time the various configurations of the protagonists form various shapes and structures, which we can correlate with the forms of organisation and relations, from tectonic shifts to geopolitical formations, social movements and groups and interpersonal relations. The mimetic potential of choreography, tension between narrative and non-narrative represent a kind of representation that takes part in the creation of a new form and the structuring of a new language, bring together ideas of reanimating socialist monuments, raising the question of the time of the post-monument, re-examining the concept of monumentality and on the other hand the dematerialisation of the monument. Branka Bencic
ARTIST BIO:
Marko Lulić, visual artist (Vienna, 1972) studied at High School for Applied Arts and Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna, where he is currently employed. He has been showing his works in numerous collective and solo exhibitions in leading international and Croatian art institutions, museums and galleries: Witte de With, Rotterdam; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; ACF New York; OCA, Oslo; Kunstforum, Vienna; October Salon, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Kunsthaus Bregenz; Kunstverein Graz. He received numerous awards and art residences. He lives and works in Vienna.
Organized in the framework of Kulturjahr 2017 – Year of Culture Austria – Croatia, in cooperation with City Galleries Osijek.
The project is supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, City of Vodnjan, Region of Istria, Austrian Culture Forum Zagreb, Tourist Board Vodnjan
