ART Habens Art Review ART Habens Art Review - Special Issue #97 | Page 71
Ante Kustre
artists are obliged to consciously dismantle their
society: to bring all this suppressed and traumatic
into the light . Playing to be an alive mirror I risk
the aggressive social reaction. Sometimes it
causes boycott of the social institutions and
media but also more heavy reactions: refusal of
the financial support to my works.
One graphite was on the wall of one Split's
monastery: „Art has no alternative“. Like
D.J.Toumin says: „ If you are looking for hell, ask
an artist where it is. If there is no artist, you are
already in hell.„ In contemporary society art has
the lead minor role: to say all that leading actors
(politics, ideology, religion, science, business)
can't, won't or doesn't know. „Art is always
something else" , says Croatian artist Josip
Kozaric. Its spiritual mobility makes her look like
God's spark. Sometimes it is invisible, although
before our eyes; and sometimes it is absent
where said to be in. „Time is more than money“,
as I stated on one T-shirt from „AK-55“ colection
(which is a label composed of my initials and my
birth year), and time will show what art is and
what we only thought it were. It knows to be the
guardian of truth and beauty, critical thinking and
expression, anticipation and warning, but also a
whore ( saint one?). Siren's call for money and
business is very seductive, and many artists do
not resist it and start dancing on the dictatorship
of the market. Gloria Moure, a renowned art
historian from Barcelona (who recently visited
Split, where she was to exhibit Jannis Kounelis),
says: "I think the art market is completely crazy
and harms art, but worse, and culture as a whole.
Culture and art are values in their own right and
they should not be reduced to cash equivalents. "
Split had impressed her, as she said, "with
specific beauty, specific story and specific
history". The fourth specificity derives from these
three; this is the specific art of Split artists, and I
see it as the fourth dimension of this 4D city
(small but very thick, condensed). Because of
treatment from the capital Zagreb ( in which all
political, financial and cultural power is
centralized ) and its geographical eccentricity,
Split never represented Croatia on some
important international exhibition, except for one;
at the Venice Biennale in 2005 ( when Mr. Zlatan
21
4
06
ART Habens
Dumanic was but one of six of the team of
Croatian artists ). He lived near me in the
Ghetto and died last year. It’ s Split's artists
experience: the authorities reveal and
acknowledge us and society accepts us after
our death. In the meantime they help us to die
as soon as possible. Just as this is written, the
war for the living space of the art association "
Adria Art Annale ", which the owner of a hotel
recently constructed, who took away a whole
room (of course, unlawfully, as usual here), and
the entrance to it was blocked by a concrete
wall of 50 cm. Members of the association tried
to return their room by demolishing that wall (in
the form of collective performance), notifying all
local media and video documentation
development regularly on Youtube, inluding the
recent conflict with the hotel owner. In the force
of their legal arguments he was backed by the
arguments of force, ie two steel rods in his
hands. So some blood is spilled.
In a society of spectacles and global overdose
of informations and sensations art is sometimes
the oasis of calmness, contemplation, healthy
asceticism and deeper consciousness. In every
case it is all that for me; sometimes more this,
sometimes more then. But as you see, this
position is endangered by greed and aggression
from the social environment. They are
particularly pronounced here on the eve of the
tourist season; when they scent the smell of
easy money and the normal ones turn into
predators. My atellier I feel as not only the
shelter from the too noisy and agressive world
of , but also as a spiritual womb, from which I
am constantly born from. During Split salon
2016. atellier was exhibited as the work of art,
as 4D instalation ( in 4 rooms, with around 400
exposed artefacts), in which you shold spend 4
days and nights to really see in whole, in all it's
four dimensions. Still there hasn't been an artist
or a custodian or the art-lover that would dare
to experience that, but my call is still on.
To me life is unimaganable without art, and I
also believe that without it human life cannot be
what it is. It just wouldn't be called human. Lets
remember