Bojan SarcevicA Curious Contortion in the Method of Progress – L’ellipse d’ellipse

It is the open form that fundamentally concerns Bojan Šarčević, born in Belgrade in 1974 and living today in Berlin and Paris; or, to let him speak for himself: “My exhibitions are not the expression of a position, but a reflection on the origins of any position.” And so this book, published for the two exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, and the Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, presents a sculptural body of work that meanders between monumental sculpture, filigree wall pieces and multi-layered films. With Bojan Šarčević, viewers never know what will come next. All that is certain is that these are aesthetic questions which, in an almost plainly Brechtian manner, confront us with how the boundary from art to life is to be crossed. By contrast, however, there is also a modernist streak in Bojan Šarčević’s work when he develops a recalcitrant form that at the same time appears as sculpture and hence, fundamentally, as the stark opposite of a boundary crossed between life and art. This practice draws on many historical models, be it the Moscow Constructivists or the architects Hans Poelzig, Erich Mendelsohn and Hans Scharoun. Yet it leaves every formalism behind. For “the fact that art wants to transform itself into a form of life,” as Michel Gauthier writes in his contribution to the catalogue, “does not mean that life divests itself of every form of art.” The catalogue now before us is in fact something of a sensation, for the artist has for the very first time permitted (and himself actively contributed to) a large number of his highly diverse works since 1999, though predominantly from the past five years, being reproduced, described and interpreted in retrospect. At long last, then, here is the book that an interested art world has been waiting for.

Exhibitions:
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, 10/2–6/5/2012
Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, 21/9–18/11/2012