The LGB Group in Brussels at D.O.R. Gallery

LGB 12/11/2011 - 02/12/2011 Vernissage 11/11/2011 19.00 - 22.00 Finnissage 02/12/2011 19.00 -

The tripartite exhibition at Gallery D.O.R. has its starting point in the novel The Readymades written by John Holten (Broken Dimanche Press, 2011) which tells the story – through a unique use of montage of found historical and contemporary documents – of The LGB Group. In order to execute the fiction of this book a collaboration with Serbian artist Darko Dragicevic resulted in the realm of the novel being extended into the world of contemporary art through the creation of a body of work corresponding to The LGB Group. Seminal works from the oeuvre of the group will be presented at D.O.R. through supporting structures such as the LGB art collection of Galerie Gojkovic, performative public interpretations of The Readymadesand relational social happenings over the course of the exhibition. Djordje Bojić, Zukunft I / Future I oil and varnish on canvas, 3 x 1,5m. Private collection 2007 CHAPTER 1: Djordje Bojić LGB years: 1995-2008 Djordje Bojić. Vernissage: November 11, 19.00 - 22.00 A curated selection of some of the seminal works of LGB artist Djordje Bojić, an artist born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1974. He studied philosophy at the University of Belgrade before abandoning his degree after the success of the show LGB with Aleksandar Gojković and Miloš Lubarda. His text based work dating from 1995 was interested in form and the concretisation of everyday realities. He was also the curator of some of the LGB Group’s seminal exhibitions. Notable shows include LGB 1995-2005, a retrospective in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (25 February - 20 March, 2008) and Around is Back Again, Today, 20 May - August 4, 2002, in Gallery Michael Jetzer. He died in Paris in 2008. His estate is managed by Galerie Gojković. CHAPTER 2: It‘s already a success! Saturday, November 19th – Friday, November 26th Over the course of the second week of the LGB exhibition there will be a performative act by the publisher John Holten (Broken Dimanche Press) who is responsible for the publication of the manuscript “To Warmann“ by Djordje Bojić. Bas Jan Ader’s work from 1972, The Boy Who Fell Over Niagara Falls will be reinvigorated by Holten in order to further facilitate the work of Bojić. Ader, in 1972, sat twice daily in an empty gallery, reading a short story. During his gallery readings, Holten will be accompanied by Bojić’s best friend and collaborator, another LGB artist, Miloš Lubarda. He will pick up certain words that play homage to Bojić’s project, each day creating a different story, different meanings. Twice daily performace: 13h – 14h & 18h – 20h CHAPTER 3: Three course meal Sunday, November 27th – Friday, December 2nd In 2011 German artist Jan Offe invited guests once more for dinner, feeling that the time was ripe to revisit the primal social scene of life: the communal dinner. The tropes of late 1990s relational aesthetics have become associated with Offe, and his dinners, replacing cutlery with our readymade human utensils, have put him squarely in the lineage of Spoerri to Tiravanija. At once a nostalgic homage to the late 1990s, when we were all that little bit younger, but also a social occasion to celebrate the on-going legacy of the LGB Group with one of the key names of the group, Herr Offe, Gallery D.O.R. will play host to the time before we’re all still in the process of over-coming. Jan Offe 3 Course Dinner beet root, carrot, apple, pesto, ricotta, spaghetti, mango, strawberries, blue syrup, white wine, red wine 220 x 180cm. Courtesy the artist. 2011 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Darko Dragičević (b. 1979, Belgrade) studied Visual Arts at The International College of Arts and Sciences in Milan where he received a Master Degree in Art Direction. Since then he ́s been working in Europe and USA as a Visual Artist and Filmmaker. His works have been featured in Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (won the 3rd price with the video “Ah!“), Ann Arbor Festival Michigan, Future Shorts London, as in various solo and group shows. Upcoming events count the exhibitions at mianki Galerie Berlin, D.O.R. Gallery Brussels and an auction in Berlinische Galerie in collaboration with KUNST Magazin Berlin. Currently he lives and works in Berlin. www.darkodragicevic.net John Holten (b. 1984 in Ireland) is a writer and editor living in Berlin. He has a BA International from University College Dublin in Ireland having completed an Erasmus year at Paris IV-Le Sorbonne in France and an MPHIL from Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland. He has curated, together with Line Madsen Simenstad and Ida Benche The Kakofonie – A European Journal of Art and Literature since 2009, showing the edited work in various European art institutions including Gallery Block T (Dublin), Stattbad (Berlin) and Pygmalion (Dublin) amongst others. He has had fiction and poetry published extensively, most recently in Lamination Colony and the AADK Press. The curated book project he co-edited represented Ireland at the prestigious Charlemagne Youth Prize in 2010, coming second out of 27 countries. His writing on art has been most recently published by The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. During the summer of 2011 he co-curated and ran the series ‘Exhibiting Literature’ at Buro BDP, Berlin. In 2011 he received a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. His first novel,The Readymades, was published in September 2011 by Broken Dimanche Press. www.johnholten.com Broken Dimanche Press (b. 2009, Berlin) is a work of fiction. All characters, situations, conversations, scenarios, art and cultural occurrences are the invention of the publisher. www.brokendimanche.eu New General Opening Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 15.00 - 18.00 or by appointment

Tomorrow I'll Be Happy @ Motto Berlin

The tour continues with one of our biggest exhibitions yet of LGB art. One of my favourite bookshops will be the venue for a unique vitrine exhibit of work from The Readymades.

If in Berlin, come along!

To mark the German launch of The Readymades by John Holten, Broken Dimanche Press are pleased to announce an exhibition by Darko Dragičević at Motto Berlin.

Found within the pages of The Readymades is the seminal text on The LGB Group (1995-2007) by one of the group's leading stars: Djordje Bojić. Extending the world of the book, BDP in conjunction with Galerie Gojković, are pleased to transform Motto's courtyard vitrines with some of the group's more renowned works.

The liminal space of Motto's courtyard will play host to work from The Readymades by:
Aleksandar Gojković (SR)
Miloš Lubarda (SR)
Elaine Pettifer (US/SZ)
Ivan Veselin (HU)
Matthias Nagry (HU)

Serbian artist and filmmaker Darko Dragičević has created the artwork.

The exhibition is presented in conjunction between BDP, Galerie Gojković and FUK Laboratories Berlin (www.fuklab.org)

Galerie Gojković Relaunching www.johnholten.com

Please check out www.johnholten.com which is now hosted by Galerie Gojković in collaboration with BDP. I'm really excited to get to have the endlessly talented, general Renaissance man and great friend Darko Dragicevic and his work on my webpage.

This is just the beginning: The Readymades are coming!

Please continue to check back and stay in touch, more artwork from Dragicevic and news of a touring LGB exhibition this autumn will be posted online in the coming weeks.

http://johnholten.com/

State of Motion

I have a short text on LGB artist Zoran Živković's meetings with John Holten in Paris. In a lovely publication State of Motion edited by the Collectivo Piso and designed by Bolos Quentes.

This Exhibition is Not the Result of a Thesis, Bit It's Starting Point...

This qoute came from the exhibition catalogue of The Death of The Audience in Vienna's Secession which Line was lucky enough to see last summer. And the on-going 'transgressions' of the thesis in question is under discussion in the latest issue of the e-flux journal, no. 13. 

Meanwhile our own 'thesis' is set to continue with around half of issue 002 of The Kakofonie sourced. It's set to be an extremely interesting and mobile collection of propaganda and art. Send in anything you may have!

The conversation between Elisabeth Leibovici and the exhibition's curator Pierre Pal-Blanc is well worth checking out.

I found it fascinating because it's in the general space of the novel I've just finished writing and the avantgarde group LGB whom I've created and who lie at its centre. I could almost substitute my own creation, Djordje Bojic, into their conversation so similiar is it to what I've been working hard to create.

Take Djordje  Bojić   [André du Colombier] for instance, a Serbian [French] artist who is even less well-known than those named above, an incredible character who embodied a kind of late version of Dada from the '90s and early 2000s [‘60s to the ‘80s], but with a very precise and concentrated radicality. He constantly worked with common people, less showing work than giving it, a bit like a neighborhood poet, exchanging a piece of work for a pack of cigarettes, generally using the thread of the rumor, the web of the conversation. He used to call up artists or museum curators and make a work from the conversation.  Bojić  [Colombier] managed to represent a way of being marginal, of staying on the border of exhibitions even while being well-known by the whole art scene...

.... Of course it’s a bit too easy to hide behind the domination and exploitation of artists in authoritarian events such as biennials, but at the same time we can clearly see that the figure of the artist-hero is no longer current, but is rather a historicist view that tries to cling to the branches of the avant-garde. Similarly, in the context of the over-institutionalized Tate Triennial, “Altermodern” works like a parody of the work of the great critics of the twentieth century, up to Pierre Restany or Germano Celant, trying to create a movement. It’s still about trying to create a party, a power position, an adhesion, contrary even to how artists themselves work. Rather than oversimplify the role of the artist, it might make more sense to look outside this figure to a form of organization to be presented or prolonged, one in which the community is involved, where not only the artist but the audience provides a disseminated, deterritorialized experience for the exhibition.

- Pierre Pal-Blanc