Artist's Mark: 183 In, 171 Left Outside the Door
The first edition of the juried Artist's Mark exhibition opens tonight at the Cvijeta Zuzoric Art Pavilion, showing work by more than 200 artists after a jury picked 183 out of 354 submissions.
Three hundred fifty four submissions, one hundred eighty three accepted artists. The two numbers sit side by side in the announcement for Artist’s Mark, and they say more about the show than any description could: just over half of everyone who sent in work made the cut, while 171 artists were left outside the door. A juried exhibition is rare enough here to be worth noting, because jurying means someone has to sign the rejection letters too.
The opening is tonight, Saturday, August 8, at 7 p.m., at the Cvijeta Zuzoric Art Pavilion at Mali Kalemegdan 1, a building designed by architect Branislav Kojic that has spent decades doing the same job, taking in whatever the local scene has to show at any given moment. This is the first edition of an international juried exhibition, an original project by Ana Marinovic, who holds a master’s degree in applied arts. The organizer is the Kreativna fabrika (Creative Factory) association, working in business and technical partnership with the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia, ULUS. Work by more than 200 artists from Serbia and abroad is on display.
Who Chose, and by What Criteria?
The international selection was decided by a jury made up of:
- Sasa Janjic
- Ugljesa Colic
- Milena Mitrovic
- Igor Markisic
- Ana Marinovic
The last name is worth pausing on. The author of the exhibition’s concept also sits on the jury that selects the work shown at it, and Ugljesa Colic and Milena Mitrovic both appear among the invited artists as well. That is not an irregularity, on projects of this size overlapping roles are common, but it is information the public should have when looking at the selection, since it explains why the show reads as one consistent taste.
Three Sections, Three Different Statuses
The show is split into three program segments, and the split is really a hierarchy.
The first is a memorial segment, with work by Borislav Nanovic and Petar Pjer Grujicic. The second belongs to invited artists, among them Djordje Aralica, Branimir Karanovic, Slavko Krunic, Jugoslav Vlahovic and Vladimir Markoski, names that have carried weight in domestic graphic art, photography and illustration for decades. The third is the international juried selection of 183 artists, which also includes a piece by Mina Nanovic.
Set side by side, the three segments trace the route to a wall in local art: you apply first, and someone invites you twenty years later. Few exhibitions lay their own mechanism this bare.
The invited section also includes work by an interdisciplinary team previously shown at the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture, under the title “Unraveling, Unraveled: Interdisciplinary Practice at Work.” This is the part of the announcement that deserves the most attention, since work that shows at the Biennale usually ends up living on here only in the catalog and in photos from the opening night. A second life in a Belgrade pavilion is the exception, not the rule, and worth seeing while it is here.
How Many Days Does the Exhibition Actually Run?
Eight on paper, six in practice. The show runs from August 8 to 15, open every day except Sunday and Monday, which knocks out August 9 and 10. That leaves tonight’s opening plus five working days, Tuesday through Friday, and Saturday, August 15, as the closing day. Admission is free the entire time.
After the official program, at 8 p.m., the Belgrade band Klabkillers plays on the pavilion terrace, with Nikola Cubrilo, Vuk Stojkic, Vukasin Mihajlovic and Dejan Ruzicic. The concert is also free.
Kreativna fabrika calls the project the crown of fifteen years of work, a claim that comes with an obligation attached. A first edition should not be judged by how many artists it gathered, but by whether the second one keeps the same ratio of submissions to selections, or whether the bar drops the moment the number of applicants grows. For now, the published figure stands, and that is more than most group exhibitions here ever offer. Six days is short for a show of this scale, so anyone counting on a second visit probably will not get one.
