OPENING: Thursday, September 23rd 2021, 8pm
Klub Kocka Gallery, Dom mladih Split, Ulica slobode 28
The exhibit is open until Monday, October 4th.
Viewings can be arranged by contacting the following number: +385992885558.
Sweet Conceptual Artist is a virtual artistic identity created in 2013 as a hybrid construction and a performative textual expression. It proceeded to act as an open dialogue platform and a collective identity, building its features and its artistic opus by interacting with observers/participants. In Split, you will be presented with its previous eight phases of development and the beginning of the ninth phase: Sweet Split Conceptual Artist Offers a Solution.
The project is focusing on the relation: art – anti-art – non-art – contemporary advertising, while questioning the position of artistic identities, status and position of artists in contemporary society, the boundaries/reach of artistic activity as well as the relationship between a work of art – artist – observer. Sweet Conceptual Artist is exploring the notion of authorship and originality, thus subverting the institutional system of art: she is both the artist and the critical subject, an engaged participatory project, a group identity, an advertising campaign and a brand.
Inspired by Jozef Beuys’ ideas about social sculpture and his thesis on “art for all”, as well as the grotesque collectivism by the Situationalist International, Sweet Conceptual Artist is consistently building on the tradition of anti-artistic interventions, using methods of appropriation and self-proclamation as well as auto-irony as her primary means of discourse. Seemingly parodying each of her new artistic appearances, she – as a mirror of events in (and beyond) the contemporary art scene– is emphasizing the contradictions on which she builds her entire opus.
Over the past years, Sweet Conceptual Artist, occasionally changing her (fictitious) national identities, realized her work through 8 phases which are interconnected, each of them beginning with a new public call for interpretation and interaction:
(1) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For a Job [Slatka Konceptualna Umjetnica traži posao (2013)],
(2) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For Works of Art [Slatka Konceptualna Umjetnica traži umjetničke radove (2014/2015)],
(3) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For Support [Slatka Konceptualna Umjetnica traži podršku (2016)],
(4) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For Understanding [Slatka Konceptualna Umjetnica traži razumijevanje (2016)],
(5) Become a Sweet Conceptual Artist / Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking for Videos [Werde Süße Konzeptkünstlerin / Süße Konzeptkünstlerin sucht Videos (2017)],
(6) Become a Sweet Conceptual Artist / Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking for Support [Werde Süße Konzeptkünstlerin / Süße Konzeptkünstlerin sucht Unterstützung (2017)],
(7) Sweet Conceptual Artist looking for texts (SCA website)
(8) Sweet Conceptual Artist Offers a Solution / Become a Sweet Conceptual Artist [Slatka Konceptualna Umjetnica nudi rješenje / Budi i ti Slatka Konceptualna Umetnica (2018)]
On March 22, 2017, with a ceremonial inauguration at the Kulturdrogerie art space in Vienna, Sweet Conceptual Artist was promoted to the newborn Austrian artist Süße Konzeptkünstlerin. In the latest, Split phase, Slatka Splitska Konceptualka (Sweet Split Conceptual Artist) is trying to present herself not only as an active participant in the Split scene, but also to take on the role of leader, advisor and healer with her usual methods of self-proclamation. After a period of isolation, which at the same time caused the double postponement of her exhibition in Split, the Sweet Split Conceptual Artist’s idea about possible solutions was also transformed. In its new phase, it’s showing an extremely escapist approach, combining meditative practices and glitch aesthetics of social media, this time excluding the two-way interaction and participation.
Her idea of Pink Sugar Wool Peristyle (cotton candy) as a possible solution is accompanied by an extremely simplified ephemeral collage that mimics the Instagram story aesthetics, offering instant realization and consumption of the proposed idea. The critical treatment of Peristyle as an indisputable symbol (of the Split conceptual scene, of massive tourism in Split, of an uninterrupted source of artistic inspiration) is manifested this time through its overemphasized banalization, which implies self-banalization of the author’s intervention.
In other words, Sweet Split Conceptual Artist is becoming a paradise for gourmands, pointing out that ritual-meditative candy therapy could be the ultimate solution in times of crisis.
- – Natasha Kadin
IMPRESSUM:
CURATOR: Natasha Kadin
PROJECT/PLATFORM COORDINATOR: Bojana S. Knežević
NMG CURATORIAL TEAM: Katarina Duplančić, Natasha Kadin, Vedran Perkov
DESIGN: Nikola Križanac
TRANSLATION: Katarina Duplančić
SETUP: Katarina Duplančić, Natasha Kadin, Franko Sardelić Kolinac, Bojana S. Knežević, Simon Simonović
THANKS: Much gratitude to all participants and bearers of the Sweet Conceptual Artist (Slatka Konceptualna Umjetnica / Süße Konzeptkünstlerin) / Sweet Split Conceptual Artist (Slatka Splitska Konceptualka) title, who have chosen to use their creative potentials to make this artistic identity shine in its full glory.
SPECIAL THANKS to our partners: KUM, PDM, MKC.
DONORS: Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media, the City of Split
MAVENA SUPPORTED BY: The National Foundation for Civil Society Development, the Kultura Nova foundation
Press:
http://pdm.hr/nmgpraktika_slatka-splitska-konceptualka-nudi-rjesenje/
https://dom-mladih.org/nmgpraktika_slatka-splitska-konceptualka-nudi-rjesenje/
https://radio.hrt.hr/radio-split/clanak/programi-u-domu-mladih-split/261780/
http://www.seecult.org/content/slatka-splitska-konceptualka-nudi-rjesenje-st-0
