PARIS.- Palais de Tokyo invites one of the most important Croatian artists, David Maljković, who has chosen to confront us with a present that cannot be defined. He explores the effects of time – be it historical time, technical time, or the time of the work itself – and puts them into action.
Born in 1973 in Rijeka, Croatia, David Maljkovic studied Fine Arts in Zagreb and Amsterdam. Using a range of different media, the artist revisits historical forms as much as he reworks his own pieces. Following a series of reuses and permutations, he creates a constellation of forms that connects the masterpieces of Yugoslavian architecture with his personal production, industrial projects and individual testimonies. But before the reprise principle, and beyond the modernist heritage, it is necessary to point out the importance of collage in David Maljkovic’s work as the artist deploys numerous operations that aim to displace, subtract and juxtapose elements towards new conceptual horizons.
David Maljkovic has developed an ambivalent configuration for the Palais de Tokyo. Two plinths were expanded to become platforms. Affording only a partial view of the artworks integrated into them, they are accessible to visitors. They are echoed in the substantial presence of museum furniture such as trestles, display cases, etc. The Display for series references previous artworks, retaining only their display devices. The artist is not aiming here for a reduction of his work to its impermeable essence, but rather sees it as a musical score containing many interpretive possibilities.
David Maljkovic extends collage to juxtaposition in Out of Projection (2009-2014) and Undated (2013), two films that bring disjointed temporalities into coexistence. In Undated (2013), a 16-millimeter film, the moving hands of Croatian sculptor Ivan Kožaric (born in 1921) are subjected to optical and sound distortions. Out of Projection (2009) associates the presence of Peugeot-Sochaux factory retirees with experimental automotive vehicles.
The titles of some of his works evoke a temporality “post-”, of long duration, and a hazy historicity: Afterform, A Long Day, Undated, for example. David Maljkovic explores reproduction and dissemination techniques – considered in art as vectors of information loss, corruption, even of a loss of aura – by playing off their discrepancies. The exhibition In Low Resolution explores individual memory and the collective imaginary as much as the temporality and representation of the experience.
The exhibition “In Low Resolution” represents an opportunity for David Maljkovic to reinterpret some of his works, reprising them according to a precise protocol. The series, entitled Display for, retains only the reactivated work’s display elements. Two of his Display for pieces – which appear as mere ghosts of past artworks – are presented at the Palais de Tokyo.
In 2009, David Maljkovic recreated on a reduced scale the American pavilion built in 1956 for the exhibition complex of the Zagreb Fair. The model resembled a shell. From this sound box of the past came the sound of a recording that resembled white noise from a tele-vision set. In Display for Lost Pavilion at Metro Pictures, New York, 2009 (2011), the sculp-ture was removed from its plinth in which an amplified microphone was placed. The repro-duction of a piece of architecture is succeeded by the artist’s revision of one of his own works. The white noise of history is replaced by a vain attempt to capture the sound of a piece of museum furniture. Display for Sources in the Air at MUSAC, León, 2011 (2011) con-sists in a museum display case that contains nothing but mist.
David Maljkovic develops a metaphor around the impossibility of representation. The laying bare, deconstruction or structural analysis of the work reduced to its display elements produce muted sounds and mist. In this minimalist nested-doll construct, David Maljkovic is not trying to achieve the reduction of his work to its impermeable essence. By exploring the limits of the artwork and what distinguishes it from the museum furniture used for its presen-tation, the artist is encouraging interpretation rather than a fixed and stable definition of the work of art.
