IGOR RAKČEVIĆ
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IGOR RAKČEVIĆ
Interview with Petar Ćuković P.C.: Your works on cardboard, a material used for packing industrial products, as well as the technique of serigraphy that you apply, have strong local historical, social and cultural references. What is it all about? Who are the people whose outlines are suggested in your works? What kind of world do they live in? I.R.: We witness, actually, we live in a very interesting period, I daresay even a historically important age in the sense that this is the time when customary norms and criteria that used to mark “comfortable” society are being changed. Past decades showed how relative the idea of comfort is, extended from the idea of a full fridge, a full gas tank and a full pantry to the idea of a full stomach. I regard that instance as very important for understanding the phenomenon of the local man, the zealous collector who hoards, who aches with symptoms of poverty and permanent exposure to danger of all kinds. While some need only a credit card to feel comfortable, the local man sees his possible comfort in some considerably more voluminous things. The embodiment of this phenomenon is cardboard, the material on which I display totally normal people, whatever that phrase means. Their world is a kind of ghetto, a venue of dubious production, sale, buy, bargain ... where success is measured by thickness of golden chain and make of mobile phone, all in a cardboard environment. P.C.: In your artwork, not only in the works on cardboard, it is not difficult to note a strong critical reflection related to some specific social incidences. These are in major part caught at the “periphery” or on the “margins”, that in so- called transitional societies actually appear as true “hubs” of social life, as the factual social mainstream. How do you perceive the purpose of critical engagement of artists today? I.R.: Assuming that the poverty of some aspects of society can be measured by the proliferation of gambling, then its spiritual poverty can be read in the expansion of cheap art. The very act of creation of art which is not standardized in a classical, commercial sense represents a kind of rebellion, and therefore it is in itself a sort of critical engagement. I believe in the need for expression of critical thought, and I think that today must be a time of general mobilization of consciousness. And that is exactly what I try to do in my art. I think that in that way I make a better contribution to the present social environment, rather than by creating pieces with a “fine art” orientation. |