Vlado Martek’s philosophical ambience Being a Piece of Paper Next to a Museum has been set up at the MSU Gallery as a preparation for the programme to celebrate the 10th anniversary of MSU’s relocation to a new building. Vlado Martek’s philosophical ambience Being a Piece of Paper Next to a Museum has been set up at the MSU Gallery as a preparation for the programme to celebrate the 10th anniversary of MSU’s relocation to a new building. 

It is a good occasion to reflect not only on the Museum’s first ten years at the new location, but also on the artist’s relationship with the institution that marked the beginnings of his artistic journey back in 1976, when he presented his work at the Confrontations exhibition. Martek is one of the most represented authors in the Museum’s collections, which was evident in the recent permanent exhibition Collections in Motion. Martek’s latest solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, titled Sentimentalities, took place back in 1987.

An artist who has built much of his oeuvre on modest, ephemeral materials such as paper, pencil and eraser, or discarded items such as pieces of mirror and fabric, refers to himself as a piece of paper when comparing himself to the institution and its architecture. It is a reference to the medium that is so dear to him, not at all monumental and yet inevitable in its intimacy and the discomforts of everyday life. It is in the transformation of seemingly insignificant objects by an artistic and poetic, or rather pre-poetic gesture of restoring objectivity to things through the body of the text that Martek’s poetic turn is revealed, pulling the visitors’ brain and drawing a gently ironic smile to their faces.

In the central part of the philosophical ambience, designed and performed at the MSU Gallery, Martek uses the words of Heraclitus, Marcus Aurelius, Baruch Spinoza, Emil Cioran, and Giorgio Agamben to present a brief anthology of his own exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, but in the cyclical form of the mythical creature Ouroboros, a symbol of gnosis and alchemy, which devours its own tail. Among the exhibited catalogues, there is one of Martek’s first solo exhibition at MSU, the (pre-)poetic ambience that has largely become part of the museum holdings. Thirty-seven years later, the philosophical ambience that Martek is presenting to commemorate not only the Museum’s anniversary, but also ten years since his own nineteenth samizdat, A Personal History and Present of the Museum of Contemporary Art, is not only an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between the artist and the Museum, or the long-tamed institutional criticism, but also an occasion for consideration, reflection, and confrontation of one’s own personal and institutional practices.

Curated by: Jasna Jakšić, Ivana Kancir

Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and City of Zagreb