Photo: Bojan Salaj
VSSD IN WORD, 1996, gallery view
THANK YOU FOR THE WORD, SINCE IT IS THE WORD THAT MATTERS HERE. THE BOOK IN FRONT OF US COULD ALSO BE CALLED THE STRUGGLE FOR THE WORD, THE STRUGGLE FOR THE APPROPRIATE WORD OF MY OWN, FOR THE STATEMENT, FOR MY OWN STATEMENT.
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE WORD means the awareness of the signification of words. Hence, it is not only writers, politicians, journalists, tradesmen and propagandists who own the word. Words also belong to every one of us. This was particularly important - I remember - in previous, past, former, ex-times when the signification of words was particularly exposed. Words are deeds, the deeds that change the world.
The specific conception of VSSD book makes it clear that the command ‘Shut up!’ does not apply here. Here the artist speaks, although not to explain, interpret, or describe…
The book contains a compilation and selection of texts which can be said to be my own, inner texts; it is parallel to my visual production, but also independent. The text tries to phrase, grasp, and comprehend the gaze, image, painting, art… and everything else as well. Thus the words and texts are not strictly related to art and painting.
VSSD (which initially meant Painter, Do You Know Thy Duty?) moved from the street to the gallery. From the very first exhibition in 1986 it represented a (physical and especially mental) occupation of gallery space, its problematisation, expansion, and also, in certain instances, its contextual and material destruction, its programmed end. The floor and walls were filled, ‘treated’ with images and substances; dusk, darkness, light, fire, smoke, scent, sound… They filled the remaining empty space, and when the viewer entered the gallery, he/she stepped into the painting and became a part of it.
The book signed by VSSD is presented at the exhibition in the Škuc Gallery (1996), that is in the space where VSSD first officially and publicly (not illegally) began as "Painter, Do You Know Thy Duty?" (1986). This is not a meaningful end (the end had already happened), nor is it a completion, or conclusion. Perhaps it is a supplementation and extension of a statement, which without this final act would be much more fragmented.