Periphery art

These days, none of us can be sure in universal art concept with its one simple meaning, in other words, we can not be sure if the “uniformity canon” of fine art shaping really belongs to the past. This is the age of various -isms or postisms, when the piece of fine art is no more shaped and understood by the rules of some universal visual-art-grammar. Fine arts expressions appear, in these circumstances, whose virtue is precise simplicity (or simplicity precise) of their idea, but which do not have any problems with that well-known request for communication, comprehensibility or legibility of semantic contents. I am saying all this, because, Asim Đelilović’s fine-art expression -presented in this exhibition – is rarity of technical purity and accuracy, rarity of the fine-art concept chosen here and the idea of the fine-art shaping purpose. Of course, the essence of this piece of fine art, is clear author’s act of choosing of the concept, of its awakening of the reason of fine-art engagement.

In Đelilović’s case, it is about obvious persuasion that the artistic engagement must be explicit, as far as its meaning is: to look at and to examine our own lives in frames of the time we’re living in, to consider life’s constellation and tendency, its signs and codes, its faces and its seamy side and to be aware of cognition in its moral-critic sense. This cognition (that has in itself the task of judging values) should be shaped in language, so that its grammar (the grammar of that language) precisely gives us the clear image of this statement about the world, i.e. its own fine-art perception, its focus and emphasis, should be shaped in a clear cognitive and moral attitude. If this is the thesis of Đelilović’s fine-art shaping, if his artistic credo is in conviction that the art engagement is mirroring the world, or alive time in which we are, in a way of revealing its hidden (or maybe fake) sense and meaning, and if it means to understand the world in such a way that it becomes “naked to the bone” in its truth (putting away its disguises, its forces or seductive manners) – then, it is quite clear to have the idea of Đelilović’s task, or if we want, the main reason and purpose of artistic (fine-art) perception. To look at the world and to see it has its sense only if it’s to comprehend, and if this comprehension is precisely shaped in focus of fine-art expression, let’s say, if it lends itself to the observer, and if his look is pointed at the essence of artist’s observation.

Đelilović operates with the idea that the art must tell us and show us, it must have the attitude, which should be a public attitude. To the extend that his fine-art telling from its esoteric side of “immanence” is closed in itself, as well as from the side of “empty sophistication” of traditional piece of fine art, and from the side of any kind of “elitism” built from the innocent and the far from the alive currant of the world. This world is neither idle, nor the stage of heroic human acts, at which, seemingly, everything goes easy, by the Utopian script of freedom, beauty and truth.

Đelilović, starts and stays in the middle of the world of his own time, as his legitimate, original (perceptive and reflexive) horizon. This is an every-day world, loaded, freighted, and swallowed by the icons, by the symbols and emblems of time in which we’re living in. Just from the every-day perception level, Đelilović builds his interpretation of the world. This every-day living, which in its ordinariness, self-comprehension in automatism and shallowness of our daily observations, which runs out of sight, becomes thematic in the work of our author. It is not only about this everyday life – that is iconography of our age – which is to be subdued to a bad eternal reproduction, multiplying and recycling, but also to disturb our automatic observations, to focus it and bring in the new semantic context, and in this way to make it naked to its real sense. In this context, Đelilović observes the modern world as a kind of icon-graphic garbage place, as a stage for the game of power and manipulation of men, as if they were a mere substance which serves to, so called, big political, religious, economic, and other ideas about the world, as a scaffold of these great ideas, which he reveals in his packings, montages, photos, objects – in a very ironic and parodic way. In his showing of the world, he interprets the world and the time as a gigantic digestion machinery that produces and devours ideologies, policies, world-views, fashions and trends. Briefly, he is trying to see through the ideology lie and Utopias of our time.
If I would like to style this Đelilović’s critical charge, in which he de-shapes our world as a game of power and the game of lies, showing its value consumption (that are manipulations in the language of modern world icon-graphy), – then I would do it through one linguistic witty remark illustrating Đelilović’s endeavour to vary one of our time middle icons, a bottle of Coca-Cola. We all know very well that the recent brutal forms of political, economical and cultural colonization is a matter of the past. Colonization (especially the cultural one)- which seems to be very challenging in theme to Đelilović- today is no more a colonization, but it is a cocacolanization. This could have been the sublime expression for Đelilović’s critical fine-art engagement of the world, which he understands as a world of power game and the world of uniformity, but which presents the face of so-much-praised globalization.

This would be “idea framework” of Đelilović’s artistic action, in my eyes. In terms of his strict fine-art physiognomy, I do not want to talk a lot. It is obvious that in conceptual and technical terms, Đelilović uses all devices available, without any prejudices, do bring down to the words his bright, associative frame works, his ironic emphasis and remarks, which are easy legible contrasts, so that he with the choice of recognizable equipment (objects), gets to the pointed effects of his own idea. He is, in his technical performance, very precise, discreet, economic, but at the level of each of his pieces, very legible, clear and witty. To add to all of this, this fine-art project, this kind of choice of artistic speech would like to bring down to the words those impulses, which are long forgotten, that were set in motion by the art of pop or the art of objet trouve. In this whole thing, Đelilović performs as a real artistic individual with his clear artistic credo and respectable artistic skill, so with his expression, his endeavourings and hopes enriches and refreshes our fine-art scene. In any case, what’s forthcoming to all of us is to see this in front of his works.