Stop making sense production, presents:
KVAKA 22 at KVAKA 22
sponsored by: Artist Anonymous
Beograd, October 2019
Do you feel stuck-ed? Does the art stand in the way for your happiness?
Do you want to quit but need help and support? Join the AA. Artist Anonymous.
Recognize your self as an artist-
Reconsider the problems it may have caused your self and others.
Call a friend, if you still have one.
Consider art as a closed chapter.
Shape up and get a real job.
Feel comfort in the fact that you are not Alone
Forgive yourself.
Say goodbye to people whit bad habits and other creative bums.
Help others to find the right path.
Be strong, everything will be just fine.
Repeat every day, until your creative side reach the level of null.
Artist anonymous
Confesion
My name is Niclas, and I am an artist.
Its accually worse then that. I ́m all so an art- historian, curator and museum-technician. You cuold say I deal whit the drug on daily basis sinse way back. We have a love/hate relationship.
When I started out theirty yers ago I hade this stupid, romantic idea of me, painting 24/7 in a attic studio in Paris. Practical stuff like food, sleep or money were never even a issue in that dream. Wimen and wine was. It was the classic picture of a rock-star. All my friend were punkrockers and played in different loud bands, and I guess that the apple dosnt fall that far from the three.
It became my passion. I painted for more then twenty years and became quit skilled. But it was never punk.Just a growing feeling that I didnt say anything. I accually didnt become a real artist until I stopped painting and left my studio. Insted I ambraced everything I earlyer despised. Video, installations and conceptuall art. And voila!
Finaly I could suprice my self and laugh at my on work. I started to work whit ready-mades and cheap suovernies. I made a jesus fountain, a death bed for kids, a arcade game where you could shot civilians in Irak. I tried to make my shows look like anything but an art exhibition. I builded a game-center, a flee market or just emptyd the place.
Marcel Duschamp once said: Can one make works which are not works of “art”? This was almost hundred years ago. He also said: Anything is art if an artist says it is. What do we do whit that?
I went for the perfect conceptuall suiced. At a group exhibition in Stockholm I showed my last and final piece. A twelv step program for artists that wants to quit. The backgruond of that are my averasion against the art world and the market. The problem whit that last piece is that every day I dont do art becomes a part of that piece. There simply are no escape.Its a catch 22. Thats why this exhibition is called catch 22 at catch 22.
Last time I brought some stickers and a bag of dead flyes. This time my bounders are disaded by the air company (the messurments for a free cabin bag is 40 x 30 x 20 cm) and for the sake of humanity some of the space will be occupaid whit socks, t-shirts aand underwear. I symply dont like artefacts at all and cant see why I should pollut the earht whit more shit then nessesary. So I bring tree video-loops that I clensed from all artistic elements. I dont do art any more.Thats why I made others do the art for me, by writing about it. And thats the reason you hold this catalog in your hand.
Niclas Zander
#sober #formerartist #stopmakingsense
Niclas Zander /// un art where there is choice, there is misery. And where there is no choice there is.
You can play this any old way: Let other people manufacture your art- like Donald Judd and his exact blueprints for prefab elements straight from the shelves of the manufacturing plant. Or let it all go and play chess instead. Like Duchamp, who pulled the plug on all forthcoming artistic endeavors by allowing us a final peep into an alchemic paradise where it was all said and present. Or rip it up, tear it down and mix it up to the groove of 404 techno and Hendrix ́ guitar- like Arthur Jafa with his appropriations of found images that bring about a sense of what it it is, this blackness, this desire and this game of shaking the foundations of what is and what is nota thing is a hole in a thing it is not- said Carl André. (Then he threw his girlfriend out the window)
What happens when you instruct other people to make your art? Do you recline in your chair after giving the orders eagerly awaiting the result or do you become a project manager with control issues? Your choice I suppose. Something to with your personality type. Take a test. I love answering questions that would give me clue as to what kind of person I am- one of my guilty pleasures would be to sneak into hair salons and leaf through the mags and circle the answers in bright red to see if I am
suitable as a partner, as a father, as an employee or just plain fit to be a human being. I would cheat of course- in the same way that I would lie to my therapist to come off as a good client with interesting traumas. It all plays into the hands of the marketplace- making art for any purpose. Because once it becomes an object, an idea or even just a notion you can be damn sure that someone, somewhere will figure out a way to turn a profit from it; whatever it is.
Yanis Varoufakis discusses the dilemma in his book “Talking to my daughter- a brief history of capitalism”. In his text, he distinguishes market value from experiential value- in other words, a thing (or an idea, or a concept, or a dream) which can be given a monetary value as opposed to an experience ( or an atmosphere, a feeling – or a dream). Wherein lies the dilemma then? Right here: Capitalism is a based on the idea of infinite growth and will eventually come to wrap its tender arms around all things, ideas and notions under the sun (and in all likelihood way beyond said star). Because it can. Because it needs to in order to keep on going. Given this, it will not be before long that the air we breathe, the walks we take and the pleasure we take in things small and big eventually will end up in the balance sheets of a market- oriented society. Democracy has paved the way for the profit- and debt- oriented societies most of us
live in, and democracy is also one of the cornerstones of contemporary art. Without a democratic political framework in place it is hard to make what we call art today. There is a social, cultural and judicial infrastructure that supports the artist in his or her endeavors to express his or herself in whatever way the individual artist desires- as long as this takes place within the framework of democracy. And the outcome- a work of art in whatever shape and fashion is immediately gobbled up by the beast.
Is this a bad thing? No. Not necessarily. But it seems to me that Niclas Zander is attempting to show us a way to fool the beast, or at least shine the light in a different direction as to direct our attention to how problematic “the situation” has become. And by that I mean the world we live in. Do you feel at home in this world? I don ́t. Or I do. I do both. I loathe the advertising on my streets, the incessant attempts to sell me more useless stuff and I miss what my neighborhood used to look like- not on dusty old photos from 40 years ago but only last year- there was a bookshop there- now its a real estate broker. At the same time I love my friends, my work and my family; all of which share time and space with the long list of shit I dislike. I am a modern human being in the sense that I am very capable at cognitive dissonance. I can entertain 2 or more opposing ideas at the same time. I know the beast is there. I feed it on a daily
basis and I know there must be a better way, but for now---- and that now which is but an endlessly fleeting moment could be so easily be liberated from the tedious sidestepping and luring the beast back into its cave that has to be the real magic of any art; the ability to suspend ourselves, our thoughts and our desires from the necessity to take the bad with the good at any given time. Just give us the good already. Or, if it has to be the bad- let it be the kind of badass art that Niclas makes, where you feel how good it can be to be bad.
Patrik Qvist /Artist
Art sucks, fuck art.
Niclas Zander/ 19.10. 2013/ Inex gallery/ Belgrade/ Serbia.
Art: expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, Suck: draw into the mouth by contracting the muscles of the lips and mouth to make a partial vacuum.
Fuck: have sexual intercourse with someone. Summoning: Expression or application of human creative skill and imagination draw into the mouth by contracting the muscles of the lips and mouth to make a partial vacuum. Have sexual intercourse with expression of human creative skill and imagination.
What should we do with art, suck it, or fuck it? Or art sucks us? Or art is just bad so we need to fuck it, to make it better? Is this question for artists or art viewer? Or its just artist command in which we need to believe and act on it? Whether all art creations have sexual nature? Should we act on this calls, on Niclas Z. exhibition? Should we drink Jesus blood for the end of art? (art piece with vine flowing from Jesus hands) Do we get any answers from Niclas Z.? Did I got any answers after 6 years?
I heard that Niclas Z. is exhibiting nothing now in gallery’s?! Is the emptiness result of art sucks and fuck art? Is he punk art anarchist? I wouldn’t say all these things if there was no Niclas Z. and this exhibition.
Are you then talking trough me now Niclas Z.? Who is Niclas Z.? What is art now?
Its always fresh to see artist that doesn’t have any limits in style, technique or contexts. Inex gallery was always open for begging and end of art. There is no end its obviously, so we praise Niclas Z. energy and his art cycles.
Darko Stojkov/ 26.08.2019/ Karamåla/ Sweden.
Tracing the importance of an art space
I can still remember, back in the end of 2015, a peculiar application to Grad Gallery's Open call, half a page of an explanation and statement all in one, by Niclas Zander from Sweden. As I was checking whether the application fulfills the formal elements, I read this statement and description and it was more than enough for me to envision the exhibition in matter of seconds. Luckily the application was in order and a month latter I was surprised to see the Jury had voted Zander’s exhibition for the annual program. I had been quite skeptical that the Jury members would disregard this short application as insufficient in description, and maybe that was true. But it certainly had not been insufficient in contemporary quality and an element of surprise.
Exhibition Traces had been a part of 2016 annual exhibition program, and Zander realized it during the end of October.
What was so surprising?
The application referred to creation of a site-specific installation consisting of empty gallery space, after
an exhibition had been disassembled. At first thought this seem absurd, but Zander’s idea has much deeper roots. Back in 2015 he was employed by the National Museum of Sweden, as a technical consultant, overlooking building and disassembling of exhibitions over the years he has developed a particular interest for the museum space itself. As an art space, the floors of the museum undergo a continuous transformation dependent on the current exhibition. Zander has followed that transformation and developed the Traces concept around it, to the finest details. I have to admit that I was surprised as we started building the exhibition, as I was skeptical about the process. Zander had planned the configuration meticulously, planning the placement of all the elements in advance.
Besides one video piece, titled The White Cube Must Die, where he aggressively intervenes in a white space referring to gallery walls, and destroys them with paint, there was no other artwork to be set up in the gallery. The video piece reflects on the start of an art space – white cube. Empty gallery walls are not considered an art space before the penetration of art into it. Thus, the white cube must
die in order to become an art space.
Traces takes it from there and deals with established art space, showing us what seems to be a transition period between two exhibitions. Placing the monitor in a corner of the gallery floor Zander makes it present but only for the purpose of continuity of his research and for context foundation. Everything else comprises of non- artistic objects manipulated into a simulation of an exhibition being taken down. Some of the objects were already in use in the gallery – ladder, power tools, nails, screws, tables, plinths while others came with Zander: dead flies and other insects collected specifically for this occasion, museum warnings, tapes with inscriptions in Swedish, and plaster dust. With all of these elements the building of Traces begun. Instead of placing frames Zander used a frame like a stencil, for staining the walls and placing nails in each stain to mimic the removed artworks. Instead of placing sculptures on the plinths, he used the plaster dust to mimic removed sculptures and dust generated from the removal. He had further dressed the space with bubble wrap, plastic wrap, wine glasses with lipstick stains and strategically placed flies and insects. Placing some
tables, chairs, a microphone and some paper Zander mimicked an artist talk or a panel, and the space was finished off with a light dusting of plaster unevenly, all over the floors.
The gallery technician was intrigued as much as I was, seeing this process, since the tools and objects used in aid to build an exhibition became the exhibition itself. The process stepped into a third stage, the white cube has died, the exhibition has happened and we are left with the Traces. The exhibition removed in order to build the actual exhibition is not important in its details, but in an effort that goes behind an exhibition, and that is why Zander has meticlously planned everything. It can just be any given exhibition built in Grad gallery at any given time. The sequence in between two exhibitions is what Zander explores here. It's the space metamorphosis itself, the spatial traces, the human traces, the dust traces, all the traces left behind. When art exits, the space remains in an in- between stage of not being exactly a white cube but it is empty of art. Or is it?
Traces exhibition should be viewed as an allover
installation, not in a way of aesthetic interpretation of an empty art space. It is Zander's investigation of status of an art space, it can be viewed as a conceptual move to exhibit the empty gallery.
In 1958 Yves Klein did just that with the famous Void exhibition. But Klein was exploring, besides the void and immaterial artwork presented by a concept, himself, and his fame as an artist. It was partly an experiment: what would happen if he only shows his name in a gallery, along with an empty cabinet to present the void. Zander's intentions are quite different, less placed around his ego and more around the identity of contemporary art space.
Traces in this sense draws more parallels with a 1969 – 1970 exhibition of US artist Robert Berry titled Closed Gallery Piece. Showing in three different cities, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Turin. Barry's exhibition consisted of a notice printed with one sentence: During the exhibition the gallery will be closed. In fact Zander tends to do the opposite. If Barry's show had the gallery closed, Zander's show opens the closed gallery for view, as this never happens regularly. It is a mysterious behind the
scenes peek into a closed art space. But why?
The answer can be traced with Zander's background as a museum technician. The name Traces was given as an intention not only to show traces of art into the space, but also to actually trace the art space reception by the audience when art is removed. With this in mind Zander has sprinkled dust allover the floors so that the audience path around the space can be traced in order to show what particular non-artistic object draws attention, and how do you move through an empty art space in general. Art has evolved and went out of spaces into the street long ago, but a gallery or a museum is still the standard for exhibitions, even though the futurists have accused these spaces of being graveyards for art. Zander plays with those facts in Traces, a dusty gallery with art long removed seem more like a graveyard (at least for the dead flies) than it seems during a show, but is it really? It keeps its status even when empty, and bears the dust and the painting traces on the walls with a kind of charm, interesting enough for the audience to still explore and be very curious about it. After all general audience is not normally allowed to see this in between stage of a gallery, making this exhibition
highly interactive. Exposing a gallery in this way Zander is exploring what makes an art space besides the art that comes and goes away? The answer? Rather simple, the people does.
People's interest for art is what gives galleries life, the audience, the professionals and the artists. If there had not been for this ongoing interest the futurist definition of museums and galleries might become the reality, along with other negative aspects this movement was believing in. It not just the interest for the show itself, it is rooted in culture, as a place to reflect on the art and meet people who also reflect, transfer new ideas to others, and receive new ideas as well. With art removed the space is to be reflected on, the impact of an art space to culture and lives of individuals, and not just one space like Grad gallery but the very idea of an art space and its continuous impact on society.
Aleksandar Stojanović Luci art historian
