Bucharest. When you get closer to the premises of the former »Casa Poporului,« that megalomaniac monument in commemoration of Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime of terror, you notice that the structure appears framed by grassy areas run to seed, steppe-like. It looks strangely unfinished; for one thing, the gigantic complex – a considerable part of the old town was demolished and many people died in the process of constructing the world’s second-largest building – is today still not complete. And for another, nature has meanwhile reclaimed the partially abandoned construction sites. The fact that the former architect is still responsible for finishing the project is bizarre; so is the fact that ›the thing,‹ as this historic legacy-turned-architecture is called, currently houses parliament, as well as, since 2004 (as part of an election campaign), a Museum of Contemporary Art. Inside the compound, almost hidden at the back, you will find the MNAC, designed to symbolize openness and democracy. But that goal is turning out to be as awkward as it is difficult in view of the museum’s new design with its superimposed white cubes that for the most part negate the historic building fabric.
Nature’s intrusion into the sphere of culture, along with a heightened attention to the predispositions of the system of art – and the canon it creates – are essential aspects of Braco Dimitrijevic’s work, now being shown comprehensively at the MNAC. Born in Sarajevo in 1948 as the son of a painter, he is said to have created his first artwork at the tender age of three, then turned totally away from this métier to become a successful skier before deciding to study art after all. Since 1969 he has participated in many exhibitions, three times alone in the documenta. »Accidental Sculpture« was created a year earlier; here, Dimitrijevic pours powdered plaster into the street and takes a picture of the cloud that appears as a car drives through. In this early work, his love for the ephemeral as well as his ironic-critical attitude toward the cult of genius are evident. His response to the latter takes the form of radical commentaries on authorship, for example in »Painting by Kresimir Klika« (1969). Dimitrijevic fundamentally varies a similar situation (a carton of milk is ›run over‹ in a street) by asking the driver involved whether the resulting mess is art; if the driver is benevolent and says yes, he gets to sign the artwork.
That same year, he produced the first »Casual Passer-by« series, taking photos of arbitrary passersby and exhibiting them, blown up to a large format. Again, he acts here within the public space, hanging the posters on buildings in the media spotlight. The extent to which contingency and fiction play a role in creating (art-)historical objectivity is reflected by works like »This could be a masterpiece« (photos with banal to kitsch motives) or »This could be a place of historical interest« (photos and inscription panels; 1971ff). This on the one hand sarcastic, on the other serious reference to the insurmountable insufficiency of common knowledge and the conjunctive method stand the test especially in comparison to more recent video works and computer animations, where formulated, indicative statements merely seem trivial.
For the likewise photographically documented group of works entitled »Triptychos post historicus,« for which sketchy watercolors exist as well, Dimitrijevic’s »Tractatus post historicus« (1976) creates a theoretical structure. Here, he says: »History should consist of an endless number of interpretations of events, so that the difference would disappear between legend – the sum of individual, often irrational interpretations in which everything seems possible – and history as we know it today with its confinement to ›proven facts.‹« Translated into art, that boils down to a confrontation of three things in well-known museums: one each of a work of art (often an incunabula of classical Modernism), an ordinary object (tools, furniture etc.) and an organic object (usually fruit) are arranged as three-dimensional still-lifes in such a manner that – despite any urge towards institutional criticism – these different items form a novel structure by virtue of a strategy that is by no means iconoclastic. There can be no doubt that this is about creating a situation of conflict that however does not disregard the connective, synthetic moment. This series, which the artist developed over several decades, bears a title that likewise manifests a relativist approach – it was formed by combining Greek and Latin words as an indicator for the transgression of entrenched affiliations.
Yet another play on words is evident in the neologism »Culturescape« that Dimitrijevi? appends to another group of works as a contrast with ›landscape,‹ a title that carries a hint of the importance of breaking out. Here, too, the observer is called on to visualize mechanisms of cultural hierarchy and classification; it is even demanded of him as the artist puts artifacts into a new context, namely alongside living animals. At times, a reptile will slither across a canvas, or two lions sit majestically in a cage next to a sculpture – the brute to be understood as metaphor for the unknown and the unforeseeable. However fascinating the mutual taming in the photographs may be, it comes across as unfortunate in this particular exhibition, which defuses an oeuvre that communicates on several levels by hardly allowing for a dialogue with the unusual location, but instead merely offering an historical retrospective.
Translated by Dagmar Breitenbach, Jennifer Taylor