"Similar to the famous Slovenian band Laibach, his work represents walking a very fine line between moral and perverse interpretations of history or contemporary global events, which are not entirely distinguishable at first glance."
Dragoljub Raša Todosijević (born 1945) is a Serbian artist belonging to the first generation of neo-avant-garde artists of the so-called new artistic practice of the 1970s. Together with Marina Abramović, he is one of the most prominent artists of the former Yugoslavia and present-day Serbia. The themes and strategies of Todosijević's works from the 1970s correspond to the interests of our artists (Petr Miler, Petr Štembera, and Jan Mlčoch) in working with their own bodies in a political sense. His later conceptual works relate to rudimentary questions of history and our relationship to ideologies in the broadest sense.
The exhibition is conceived for the spaces of the Stone Bell House, with the lower floor devoted to his older works from the 1970s, relating to domestic analog production of action art. The upper floor is devoted to a selection of his watercolors (Gott liebt die Serben, Depresivna apstrakcija) and Diary, a variation of which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2011, where it won the main prize for the national pavilion. His installations are represented by a huge work from the Gott liebt die Serben series, which consists of tables forming a giant swastika – part of the installation is a communal dinner.
In the broadest sense, Todosijević's exhibition and his lifelong artistic practice balance on the edge of the possibilities of interpreting various symbols originating from history, our present, or the art world itself. Similar to the famous Slovenian group Laibach, his work represents walking a very fine line between moral and perverse interpretations of history or contemporary global events, which are not entirely distinguishable at first glance. Just as it is difficult to navigate the present and its manifestations in the form of global political phenomena, Todosijević's artistic practice, full of contradictions in meaning, offers a possible counterbalance and contrast that serves as a guide.
