{"id":411,"date":"1971-03-17T10:15:36","date_gmt":"1971-03-17T10:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/?p=411"},"modified":"2021-02-15T02:37:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T02:37:36","slug":"goran-trbuljak-i-do-not-wish-to-show-anything-new-or-original-1971-the-fact-that-someone-was-given-an-opportunity-to-make-an-exhibition-is-more-important-that-what-will-actually-be-shown-th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/goran-trbuljak-i-do-not-wish-to-show-anything-new-or-original-1971-the-fact-that-someone-was-given-an-opportunity-to-make-an-exhibition-is-more-important-that-what-will-actually-be-shown-th\/","title":{"rendered":"“I do not wish to show…” (1971); “The fact that someone was given an opportunity…” (1973); “Retrospective” (1981) exhibitions by Goran Trbuljak"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Student<\/a>
1\/5<\/span>Student Center Gallery poster (\"I do not wish to show anything new or original\") 1971. All photos courtesy of Goran Trbuljak.<\/div><\/div>
\"Student<\/a>
1\/5<\/span>Student Center Gallery set-up, 1971.<\/div><\/div>
\"Gallery<\/a>
1\/5<\/span>Gallery of Contemporary Art poster (\"The fact that someone was given the opportunity...), 1973.<\/div><\/div>
\"Gallery<\/a>
1\/5<\/span>Gallery of Contemporary Art set-up, 1973.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"Retrospective,\"<\/a>
1\/5<\/span>\"Retrospective,\" Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, 1981. Caption: \u201cI do not wish to show anything new or original, the fact that someone was given an opportunity to make an exhibition is more important that what will actually be shown there, with this exhibition I maintain continuity in my work.\"<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

In the early 1970s, Goran Trbuljak made the first in a series of exhibitions in gallery spaces showing nothing but the poster that advertised the exhibition. The poster typically included a photograph, the place and date of exhibition, and the title written in the form of an artistic statement.\u00a0The first exhibition shown in 1971 at the Student Center Gallery presented a poster with Trbuljak\u2019s photographic self-portrait and the statement: \u201cI do not wish to show anything new or original.\u201d In this first major public presentation of his work, Trbuljak articulated his position as that of an artist refusing to be an artist in the conventional sense and rejecting participation in the tried-out formulas of novelty and originality that condition success in the art world. At the same time, he showed how difficult it was to extricate oneself from the existing system: precisely by declaring not to wish to show anything new or original, he managed to introduce something that was both new and original. The novel and original form of a poster-exhibition functioned by way of appropriating the tools by which art events get promoted and incorporating them into the artwork.\u00a0The poster and the exhibition thus became conflated and reduced to the same PR function: that of communicating the condensed statement of the artist\u2019s project.<\/p>\n

This process of deconstructing the logic of authorship, promotion, and success governing the art world, was continued in his\u00a0second solo presentation in Zagreb in 1973, this time at the Gallery of Contemporary Art (today the Museum of Contemporary Art), the most prominent contemporary art venue in the city. Here, the exhibition consisted of a poster with the photographic image of the gallery\u2019s building and the statement: \u201cThe fact that someone was given an opportunity to make an exhibition is more important that what will actually be shown there.\u201d What was implicit in his previous work (i.e., the fact that the announcement was equal or even more important than the exhibition), is here made explicit by a statement that foregrounds institutional granting of \u201copportunities\u201d as the primary condition of art production. In 1981, at the Belgrade Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Trbuljak presented his \u201cRetrospective\u201d\u2014a poster merging two previous statements with a new one: \u201cWith this exhibition I maintain continuity in my work.\u201d Again Trbuljak at the same time deconstructed and perpetuated one of the postulates of achieving success: continuity, i.e. the creating and maintaining of an idiosyncratic artistic style.<\/p>\n

What makes these works by Trbuljak so relevant for the history of exhibitions is precisely that they were not conceived as individual works to be presented at exhibitions<\/em>, they were conceived precisely as exhibitions<\/em>, or as he himself described them in 1981 as \u201cworks-exhibitions.\u201d[1]<\/a> Thus, his artistic practice was based on the appropriation, translation and deconstruction of the institutional and curatorial discourses and methods, but without eliding the issue of his own position and complicity as an artist in the existing art world.<\/p>\n

Guide\u00a0<\/strong>for the chronology\u00a0(Ivana Bago:\u00a0Something to think about: values and valeurs of visibility in Zagreb from 1961 to 1986<\/em>)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early 1970s, Goran Trbuljak made the first in a series of exhibitions in gallery spaces showing nothing but the poster that advertised the exhibition. The poster typically included a photograph, the place and date of exhibition, and the title written in the form of an artistic statement.\u00a0The first exhibition shown in 1971 at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"keywords":[55,57,124,58],"locations":[42,41,43],"persons":[146],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keywords?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"locations","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/locations?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"persons","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tranzit.org\/exhibitionarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/persons?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}