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2010. In Your Face! (Original title: "Uta-ta!")

    It seems to me that pieces of art exhibited in galleries make little sense except for personal satisfaction. In the environment where people do not have the habit of going to the galleries and subscribing for the mailing lists to keep them informed about artistic events, leaving only people who work in the domain of art and their close friends as the audience, exhibiting in galleries seems more and more passive, personal and closed.

    The words „THIS WALL IS SPECIAL, ONLY THE ARTISTS ELITE CAN SEE IT!“ have been cut out of transparent film and pasted on one of the gallery walls. They narratively invoke the constantly-repeated situation. It is “us” alone who look at that wall, “us” alone who can see the transparent letters, the “emperor’s new suit”.

    On the one hand, as a fan of art and public space intervention in general I believe this is also a personal reminder that art can be communicative, even break taboos, make changes, cause revolutions but that it should suffice to be at least visible to the others, to step out of its boundaries (the enclosed space of the gallery); this is a personal need for the art to communicate with all those people who never enter into galleries. Who are we doing this for if we all just end up patting each other's shoulders?

    Yet , I regret the fact that this prestigious „Mangelos“ award means nothing outside the narrow artistic circles – as though it did not exist, no one has heard of it, let alone of the award winners. And there it remains in our little intimate circle, like one of the walls tucked in and  „hidden“ from the eyes and the interest outside the space of  „the white cube“, in your face...

Links:

http://www.mangelosnagrada.org.rs/sr/mradanovic.php

http://artycok.tv/lang/en-us/4623/mangelos-award-2010/

2007. "Building Body/Building Identity", Institut Culturel