Ante Kustre ART Habens the world in Split every year. Thus, there is more and more split people in the world, and it is worrying. British journalist and blogger Natalie Chal, in her interview in daily Split newspaper, claims:“ Split way of life will become the world hit!” What makes happy ordinary people and tourist workers, concerns me as an artist.
Most of my pieces of arts are expressions of my concerns for future of my city, society and world as whole. And for future of myself and other Split artists. Political structures in Split treat us like suspicious elements, sometimes like traitors or just like parasites. So, we are the last minority in the state which has no protection and which is marginalized and underestimate completely( as we are some kind of Jewish people). People in Split uses, by centuries, the name“ Get”( which means Ghetto), for almost all living space in Diokletian’ s Palace. So, I am living and working in the conditions of Ghetto, which is not surrounded by wire but it is by massive and high ideological and financial walls. Maybe from this experience came out unconsciously the idea for the installation“ My favorite prisons”?! Or it ' s time again for the refrain of the Elivis Prerslery ' s song „ In the Ghetto“? Anyway, since I was a child, I used to feel the world as disintegrated and that explains my constant need to glue its parts in collage ensemble. This life delivers me on daily bases plenty of materials for various forms of artistic connections and binding, which frustrates me as a man and makes me sad, but on the other side, it stimulates me as an artist.
My artistic process is preceded by accumulation of all these painful stimulants, sometimes until the edges of my endurance. So, in these moments, there is always some trigger or some drop that overflows the glass and there is no other way for me but start working. I admit that before such moments, I try to find some other easier way out but, sooner or later, I accept my artist’ s duty and enjoy in it. In my younger age, I used to oscillate between“ arto-holic” and artabstinent, but it was a time when split dominated over me and not me over it.
Objects and materials used in my intalation / s I found not searching for them: on the street, in the flea-market, in the containers … When you are consiously looking for something the worst thing that can happen is that you really find it! Then you are in the danger to become the master of your piece not seeing that you are a slave of your idea from the beginning. Then your art piece starst to be framed by the borders of your concept, which nurtures your tyranny. In that kind of approach and process there are no surprises and happy conidencies, nor for you or for the consuments of the art piece. In the relationship between me and the found object / material a certain affection( need, sympathy or love) is necessary; that material wants and needs me( to prolong its life) and I need it( to intensify my artistic life). Recognition, of which there ' s all about, happens in a part of second, in there is no palce for consciousness( it comes later). So, there becomes a vibration of the unconscious that decides which object I wil take in my atellier. I love to call those objects „“ les objets retrouves“ because I have a feeling that I had to lose them first to find them again in the right moment. Sometimes happens to me that( fe in the work „ My last prison“) the fusion of the two objects from different galaxies / conetxts conjuncts them into the new unit / text almost already after finding them, and sometimes it takes even years to get to the real match( like for the series of the collages „ Just another wall paper on the wall“, for which the matrials I found in London 1997( near by Charity cross). So emerged object I call " ready-made in Split ". Installation“ My
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