Mladen Stilinović

White Skin

Barcelona
Oct 1 - Dec 24, 2015
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Mladen Stilinović made these works during the war in Croatia in response to the situation, when the artist was unable to establish any rapport with political factors.

NoguerasBlanchard is pleased to announce the first exhibition in the gallery’s new location in L’ Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona). With the aim of presenting key works by established artists, the new programme will consist of four exhibitions per season. White – Skin by Croatian artist Mladen Stilinović (Belgrade, 1947 ) is the artist’s first exhibition in Barcelona and focuses on works produced during the Balkan conflict. Created between 1990 and 1995, they belong to the White Absence and Skin series, from which the exhibition takes its title.

Mladen Stilinović made these works during the war in Croatia in response to the situation, when the artist was unable to establish any rapport with political factors. These works focus on individual experience and reflect impotence. In reference to the lines by Spanish poet Jorge Guillén “Does the world seek a white, total, lasting absence?” Mladen Stilinović titled his cycle of works White Absence. “What is the color of pain, the artist asked himself in the early, war-torn 1990s in Croatia. ‘White is the color of silence, very intimate, and pain is an intimate thing’, says the artist who used white to cover images and objects encompassing various concepts: emptiness, absence, pain, poverty and absurdity. What really interests him is not the ideological content of a specific type of power, socialist or capitalist, but rather neutralizing the apparatuses that reproduce power as such as their effect on the individual. In that sense, the concept of power, in terms of pain and sadness, can be read as Spinozist: he fundamentally sees it as an obstacle in order to bring about the potentia agendi of each individual. In the words of the artist, “during the war I became numb in art and in other situations, silence is pain.”

Stilinović has always worked with language, especially with the direct impact of the language of politics on the language of everyday life and art. In his universe, language is an ideological trap, a kind of communication that carries with it a threat: the violence of forcing the individual to belong to a linguistic community, with all the rules and constrictions presupposed by that membership to one’s subjectivity. His “white works” turn inwards, they do not contain any subversive elements but are poetic instead, and talk about that which is hard to express.

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Installation

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Selected Works

Mladen Stilinović
Tri secera (Three Sugars)

1995

Sugar, printed paper on wood shelf

10 x 16 x 5 cm (3 1516 x 6 516 x 1 3132 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Zašti eno ime ništa / Protected Nothing

1995

Umbrella food cover

35 x 35 x 35 cm (13 2532 x 13 2532 x 13 2532 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Jastuk / Pillow

1994

Paper on pillow

32 x 40 x 13 cm (12 1932 x 15 34 x 5 18 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Mali papiri / Little papers

1992

Papers on cork, pins, wooden frame

38.5 x 59 cm (15 532 x 23 732 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
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1990

Pencil on plastic plate

18 ⌀(7 332 ⌀⌀18 cm (⌀7 332 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Geometrija tuge (Geometry of Sorrow)

1992

Acrylic on wooden board

48 x 35 x 2.7 cm (18 2932 x 13 2532 x 1 116 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Bol 3 (Pain 3)

1990

Acrylic on wooden box

23 x 15 x 5 cm (9 116 x 5 2932 x 1 3132 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Kravata - kvadrat (Tie - square)

1991

Acrylic on tie

80 x 8 cm (31 12 x 3 532 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Parketi / Wood flooring

1993

Acrylic on wood flooring

24 x 32 cm (9 716 x 12 1932 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Trokut / Triangle

1990

Acrylic and pencil on wooden triangle

16 x 16 cm (6 516 x 6 516 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Sapun (Soap)

1992

Photograph, soap, glass on wooden board

40 x 20 x 2 cm (15 34 x 7 78 x 2532 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Oci (Eyes)

1992

Acrylic, color photographs, glass on wooden board

40 x 20 x 1.8 cm (15 34 x 7 78 x 2332 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Trokut koza (Triangle Skin)

1990

Acrylic, color photograph on wooden board

10 x 2 x 10 cm (3 1516 x 2532 x 3 1516 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Kvadrat koza (Square Skin)

1992

Photocopy on wooden board

24 x 24 cm (9 716 x 9 716 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
3 x Koza (3 x Skin)

1993

Colour photographs, acrylic on wooden board

24 x 102 x 2 cm (9 716 x 40 532 x 2532 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Seflja s dvije kocke (Ladle with Two Dice)

1994

Plastic ladle, wooden dice, acrylic, photograph

28 x 8 x 6 cm (11 132 x 3 532 x 2 38 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Koza - kvadrat (Skin - Square)

1993

Acrylic, color photographs, glass on wooden board

16.5 x 33 x 2.2 cm (6 12 x 13 x 78 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Oko (Eye)

1991

Acrylic, mirror, photograph on wooden board

42 x 9 x 12 cm (16 1732 x 3 1732 x 4 2332 inches)

Mladen Stilinović
Sivi Kvadrat (Gray Square)

1992

Acrylic on cardboard

50 x 50 cm (19 1116 x 19 1116 inches)

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