Mladen Stilinović

Mladen Stilinović (* 1947 in Belgrade ) is a native of Yugoslavia conceptual artist. As a representative of the New Art Practice ( " Nova umjetnička praksa " / " New Art Practice" ), he deals with the importance of work and the role of the artist, where he was the means of irony, absurdity and the reductio ad absurdum uses.

Life and work

Stilinović been active since the late 1960s in the informal art scene of Yugoslavia. From 1969 to 1976 he dealt with experimental film. In 1975 he was in Zagreb founding member of the artist group " šestorice autora " (Six Auten ) were among the next to him Martek Vladimir, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović and Fedomir Vučemilović. The group was active until 1979. In addition to his artistic work, he was co-founder of the short-lived 1978 Podroom Gallery, and managed from 1981 to 1991 the Extended Media Gallery. Among the earliest still shown today works by Stilinović heard " Sing! ", A photo of the artist with a banknote on his forehead. The work dealt with the contradiction between payment for art and artistic freedom, and served in 2011 as the title of a retrospective at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.

His most famous works include the series " Exploitation of the Dead" ( 1984-1990 ). The 200 - piece installation represents a mixture of photos containing cartoons in the style of Philip Guston, and can be read as an eastern European response to the Mexican Day of the Dead. The series has been exhibited widely, including in 2007 at documenta 12 in Kassel.

His work "Dictionary - Pain" was exhibited in 2003 at the 50th Venice Biennale as a guest post in the Slovenian pavilion. The work consisted of the individually framed pages of a dictionary, in which everything was whitewashed, apart from the defining words. Instead of an explanation to the words Stilinović added to each handwritten word "pain " a (pain).

" Laziness is the absence of movement and thinking, stupid time - total amnesia. Laziness is further indifference, staring into nothingness, non- activity, impotence. It is sheer stupidity, a time of pain, useless concentration. These virtues of laziness are important factors in art. It is not enough to know something about laziness, it must be practiced and perfected. Artists in the West are not lazy and therefore not artists but rather producers of something ... [ ... ] Finally, I conclude with the laziness sake. Without laziness not art "

Stilinović lives and works in Zagreb.