Asimartworks 2016

ASIM ĐELILOVIĆ PERIPHERY ART www.asimartworks.com

ART WORKS 1998/2016 A rche ol o g y Ar ticles B eh i n d Id e ol o g y C o c a c ol an i z at i on Inst r uments Por t rets S e crets War L ords

05 Bran k a Vuj anov i ć 09 Nenad Veličković 13 Su lejman B osto 17 B a e s i m Sp a h i ć 23 Aida Ab adžić Ho džić 29 Sl a đ an a G ol ij an i n ASIM ĐELILOVIĆ ART WORKS 33 A rche ol o g y 49 Ar ticles 75 B eh i n d Ide ol o g y 101 C o c a c ol an i z at i on 115 Inst r ument s 131 Por t rets 161 S e crets 177 War L ords

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Branka Vujanović VISUAL CODIFICATION OF REALITY On the Periphery Art of Asim Đelilović

A multilayered notion of periphery art has been used by Asim Đelilović to designate his artistic activity since the mid 1990s. The layers of hierarchical positions (“high” art and popular art) and territorial positions (center – periphery, Western culture – East European culture, national – international) are accompanied by the problem of being engaged in the field of art that is moved to the periphery in relation to our daily-political and economic reality. From such a position of “periphery” artist, Asim Đelilović carries out his relentless visual critique of both local and regional transitional post-Yugoslav situation (cycles titled After Paradise and War Lords) as well as of global “post-ideological” era of liberal capitalism (cycles Cocacolanization and Behind Ideology). Ideology is not only a specific doctrine or a system of illusi-ons about the real conditions of life (Althusser) but also a system of everyday practices or habits that directs subjects’ self-realization (Bourdieu). Đelilović focuses attention upon the visual codification of the everyday in order to point to its cultural, economic, religious, and medial role in shaping the mentality of contemporary man. At the border between high art and design, the principles of Pop Art in this case serve as means for disclosing the broken promises of prosperity, while the advertising strategies are put in the service of “demythologisation of contemporary iconic culture [...] This type of contemporary art becomes documentary, and the artist is a documentarist of the world that passes by” (Besim Spahić, introductory text to the exhibition of A. Đelilović, Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, October 23rd, 2003).

Asim Đelilović documents how ideology functions further in “post-ideological” era in the form of consumerist propaganda that swallows cultural,

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political, and religious value systems. However, the artist does not reduce his work to disclosing post-ideological myths. His interest goes to the universal questions of humanity, questions of heart and mind, which add another layer of meaning to his notion of “periphery art.” Particularly telling in this regard is the series of works titled Little Story on Peoples Hearts (2002-2005) in which the mane means of expression are visualized and materialized poetic metaphors: there are hearts of light, earth and flowers; there are wooden hearts with traces of burning; there are hearts of stone covered by moss and hearts eaten by corrosion. This Story is followed by the series of Portraits (2009) in which the pattern-portrait goes through transformation depending on the background it leans on: from leaves to waves. Digital print “Closed Mind” (2011) is also a visualized poetic metaphor with universal meaning.

Although Đelilović’s visual critique is conducted with a characteristic humor, it is also imbued with bitterness that cannot be ignored. The visuality of these bitter, humoristic, and associative works is based in the encounter of contradictory associati-ons, and the confrontation of the phenomena and their reverse meanings. However, visual organiza-tion is therein grounded in the principle “nothing in excess.” According to this principle, in contrast to Dadaistic or Surrealistic visual manifests, there is nothing accidental, saturated, chaotic or phanta-stic. Even garbage is carefully arranged and every juxtaposition thoughtfully planned: the arrange-ment of waste around “The Man of the 20th Centu-ry” or on the “Map of the World”; chocolate eggs Kinder-Surprise in the nest of barbed-wire (“Sarajevo Surprise”); the First Aid box in which the grenades, boxes of Marllboro cigarettes and cans of Coca-Cola are placed; glass bottles of Coca-Cola in objects and installations; visual similarity in form of the grenade and pineapple in the photo-work “North-South”; steel grilles as real-experiential counterpoint to the abstract two-dimensionality of American flag as a symbol of “American Freedom”...

In its triple appearance (as text, as visual cod and as materialized metaphor), the work of Asim Đelilović enters into the expanded field of visuality that in contrast to “pure visuality” of high modernist formalism and sometimes depoliticized visuality of Pop Art becomes a space for questioning the social and cultural mechanisms of remembrance, difference, and distribution of meanings, but also a space for the affirmation of universal values of open heart and open mind.

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Visual codification of reality is one of the most important mode of production of cultural values and our ideas about what is worth seeing and why it is worth seeing. Conceptual richness and critical engagement of Asim Đelilović’s works go beyond his primary vocation of product designer. They show suggestively the complexity and functioning of the image in the process of creating and shaping the ideological imperatives, as well as the critical power of artistic “image-text” that brings about the concurrence of ethics and aesthetics.

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Nenad Veličković INTERVENTION INTO REALITY

For the past fifteen years the works of Asim Đelilović have represented a continuous sequence of poignant observations on the state of contemporary man in an alienated world. Even though his life and work has been linked to Sarajevo during that time, his themes are universal. For him, art is not a refuge from reality, marked with the crisis in democracy and consumerism as an alternative to freedom, but an instrument of resistance to the managers of that new and increasingly inhuman world.

Hence, his opus is, for the most part, a variation of a clear engagement without greater experiments in form, defined mostly by its minimalism and clarity of its message. Even when he is clearly dedicated to the material (especially in the cycles on the themes: On human hearts and Portraits) the clarity of intention and idea of the message remain the first and main goals of his artistic venture.

After decade and a half, most of his installations (or should one say interventions into objects?!) are available on posters and photographs. In some other case, it would present an obstacle to the full appreciation of the work of art. However, Đelilović’s concept does not mystify its importance. If given a choice, he would choose an abstracted visitor over an approving critic.

Play and humor pervade regardless of the technique and the material.

Humor is the greatest asset of rationality, and it is an ally that Đelilović counts on in his communication with people. Sometimes laughter is caused by mere resemblance, as between a pineapple and a grenade, or a bullet and an ampoule with medicine, or a word pun (The war is over rom-pom pon), but more often the comic effect is achieved by confronting carefully elected objects (first aid kit filled with profiteer commodities) or a photography

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(diptych with Tito). Nevertheless, his “handmade works” are the best, the ones where the artist’s hand has prepared the ground, such as the nest made from barbed wire with two kinder eggs in it, or the “cork” on a green water melon cut out in the form of a five-pointed star. The five-pointed star is, together with the logo of coca-cola, the most frequent symbol in Đelilović’s opus; the red colour connecting the two ideological opposites is used by the artists to show the illusion of their contrariness. In his view, there is no real difference between what used to be called the East and the West; on both sides one is not free, since there is no real alternative. America is not the land of freedom. On the contrary, it is a bird of prey under whose symbol, the griffon eagle, a nightingale can survive only in the cage. Its flag, fluttering over the history of the 20th century, supposedly victorio-usly spreading democratic values, is sewn by the artist’s intervention into ordinary bed linen, which renders its self-proclaimed moral superiority unrealistic.

The American dream is a dream of security, cleanliness and warmth in the dimensions of the flag. Cynicism is not a frequent gesture and guest in the attitudes and thoughts of Asim Đelilović, but when it comes to Uncle Sam it features more as a rule than an exception. The resigned artist reminds us of the past of that free na(rra)tion by putting a coca-cola in the hand of an Indian, by turning the point of a gun at an arrow, implying, in the context of the genocide of the Continent’s indigenous population, that the American president remains- a gunman. Đelilović is an equally austere judge of the ideology of the country he grew up in. Two archive photos with the same motive, a hunter with his leg on the dead animal, by the artist’s intervention confront Göring and Tito, and at the same time confront Tito’s admirers with the question: what is the connection between these two politicians? Caught in the crime over innocent victim, in the manner of Danilo Kiš, in the sport which is not a sport from the perspective of the animal, titoism has to answer for the cult of personality, Bleiburg, Goli otok, red bourgeoisie...

Critical of every ideology (which he believes to be alienated consciousness), Đelilović does not bypass religion. The installation, which represents a kind of homage to Magritte (the half-lowered shutter on a window behind which there is a wall), consists of two parts –a picture of a closed door in the middle of the sky, and shoes scattered below the picture – on

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the floor of the gallery. The two parts bring together two motives: mass graves (implied by the scattered shoes) and prayer (shoes left in front of the door of the mosque). Is religion more valuable than human life and are the doors of the mosque the gates of heaven? The author’s ironic answer is no.

Wasting no time on proving the obvious (genocide in Srebrenica), the artist questions the ideological (in this case religious) misuse of the victims.

Consumerism is also a target of Đelilović’s artistic and social engagement. Apart from the already mentioned coca-cola, pharmaceutical industry is also in the focus of his criticism. One of his most effective interventions into objects is the famous Gautier’s perfume bottle in the shape of a female torso, which Đelilović fills with different medicines.

Life on prescription drugs, temporary life, life on a loan, life that is little but controlled illness that is the life of the contemporary man, scared, blackmailed and stultified. There is no remedy for this: even Đelilović’s profession, product design (written on the giant box of medicines in a shopping cart) is harnessed in the global annulment of humanity. Hence the empty picture frames, hanged on a butcher’s hook like legs of beef. Similarly, items taken out of and placed in front of a chest box serve as a replacement for life and the deceased. Is that all that is left after us, are those pieces of paper and trinkets our only remains? Is the artist a necrophiliac?

Or are there values that exist outside the material world that the art has to discover and defend? Đelilović’s work is committed to the latter.

In that sense, the triptych Leaders (from Instruments) is arguably the best artistic achievement in this collection, summarizing the poetics of Asim Đelilović in the best possible way. Pope Woytila, Bush Jr. and Mick Jagger, one next to the other, all three with microphone and a fist splitting the air, lined up as in an animated sequence, in which the microphone rises and the fist lowers, become one: an image of the master of the world, who governs by force, religion and leisure. But not art which laughs at him, taking off his mask, the art whose excellent representative in our time is Asim Đelilović.

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Sulejman Bosto PERIPHERY ART the introductory text of the promotion – Roman Petrović, Sarajevo, October, 10th 2000

These days, none of us can be sure in universal art concept with its one simple meaning, in other words, we can not be sure if the “uniformity canon” of fine art shaping really belongs to the past. This is the age of various -isms or postisms, when the piece of fine art is no more shaped and understood by the rules of some universal visual-art-grammar. Fine arts expressions appear, in these circumstances, whose virtue is precise simplicity (or simplicity precise) of their idea, but which do not have any problems with that wellknown request for communication, comprehensibility or legibility of semantic contents. I am saying all this, because, Asim Đelilović’s fine-art expression -presented in this exhibition – is rarity of technical purity and accuracy, rarity of the fine-art concept chosen here and the idea of the fine-art shaping purpose. Of course, the essence of this piece of fine art, is clear author’s act of choosing of the concept, of its awakening of the reason of fineart engagement.

In Đelilović’s case, it is about obvious persuasion that the artistic engagement must be explicit, as far as its meaning is: to look at and to examine our own lives in frames of the time we’re living in, to consider life’s constellation and tendency, its signs and codes, its faces and its seamy side and to be aware of cognition in its moral-critic sense. This cognition (that has in itself the task of judging values) should be shaped in language, so that its grammar (the grammar of that language) precisely gives us the clear image of this statement about the world, i.e. its own fine-art perception, its focus and emphasis, should be shaped in a clear cognitive and moral attitude. If this is the thesis of Đelilović’s fine-art shaping, if his artistic credo is in conviction that the art engagement is mirroring the world, or alive time in which

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we are, in a way of revealing its hidden (or maybe fake) sense and meaning, and if it means to understand the world in such a way that it becomes “naked to the bone” in its truth (putting away its disguises, its forces or seductive manners) – then, it is quite clear to have the idea of Đelilović’s task, or if we want, the main reason and purpose of artistic (fine-art) perception. To look at the world and to see it has its sense only if it’s to comprehend, and if this comprehension is precisely shaped in focus of fine-art expression, let’s say, if it lends itself to the observer, and if his look is pointed at the essence of artist’s observation. Đelilović operates with the idea that the art must tell us and show us, it must have the attitude, which should be a public attitude. To the extend that his fine-art telling from its esoteric side of “immanence” is closed in itself, as well as from the side of “empty sophistication” of traditional piece of fine art, and from the side of any kind of “elitism” built from the innocent and the far from the alive currant of the world. This world is neither idle, nor the stage of heroic human acts, at which, seemingly, everything goes easy, by the Utopian script of freedom, beauty and truth. Đelilović, starts and stays in the middle of the world of his own time, as his legitimate, original (perceptive and reflexive) horizon. This is an everyday world, loaded, freighted, and swallowed by the icons, by the symbols and emblems of time in which we’re living in. Just from the every-day perception level, Đelilović builds his interpretation of the world. This everyday living, which in its ordinariness, self-comprehension in automatism and shallowness of our daily observations, which runs out of sight, becomes thematic in the work of our author. It is not only about this everyday life – that is iconography of our age – which is to be subdued to a bad eternal reproduction, multiplying and recycling, but also to disturb our automatic observations, to focus it and bring in the new semantic context, and in this way to make it naked to its real sense. In this context, Đelilović observes the modern world as a kind of icon-graphic garbage place, as a stage for the game of power and manipulation of men, as if they were a mere substance which serves to, so called, big political, religious, economic, and other ideas about the world, as a scaffold of these great ideas, which he reveals in his packings, montages, photos, objects – in a very ironic and parodic way. In his showing of the world, he interprets the world and the time as a gigantic

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digestion machinery that produces and devours ideologies, policies, worldviews, fashions and trends. Briefly, he is trying to see through the ideology lie and Utopias of our time.

If I would like to style this Đelilović’s critical charge, in which he deshapes our world as a game of power and the game of lies, showing its value consumption (that are manipulations in the language of modern world icongraphy), – then I would do it through one linguistic witty remark illustrating Đelilović’s endeavour to vary one of our time middle icons, a bottle of Coca-Cola. We all know very well that the recent brutal forms of political, economical and cultural colonization is a matter of the past. Colonization (especially the cultural one)- which seems to be very challenging in theme to Đelilović- today is no more a colonization, but it is a cocacolanization.

This could have been the sublime expression for Đelilović’s critical fine-art engagement of the world, which he understands as a world of power game and the world of uniformity, but which presents the face of so-much-praised globalization.

This would be “idea framework” of Đelilović’s artistic action, in my eyes. In terms of his strict fine-art physiognomy, I do not want to talk a lot.

It is obvious that in conceptual and technical terms, Đelilović uses all devices available, without any prejudices, do bring down to the words his bright, associative frame works, his ironic emphasis and remarks, which are easy legible contrasts, so that he with the choice of recognizable equipment (objects), gets to the pointed effects of his own idea. He is, in his technical performance, very precise, discreet, economic, but at the level of each of his pieces, very legible, clear and witty. To add to all of this, this fine-art project, this kind of choice of artistic speech would like to bring down to the words those impulses, which are long forgotten, that were set in motion by the art of pop or the art of objet trouve. In this whole thing, Đelilović performs as a real artistic individual with his clear artistic credo and respectable artistic skill, so with his expression, his endeavourings and hopes enriches and refreshes our fine-art scene. In any case, what’s forthcoming to all of us is to see this in front of his works.

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Besim Spahić PERIPHERY ART / REDESIGN The introductory text of the promotion – Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, October, 23th 2003

I am faced with a dilemma: in this age of mass production, speed and images, when people hardly read anymore, should I write a “serious text” about work we are wittnessing at the present exhibition or should I leave you, the judges of this event, to see and experience not a spectacle in an artistic and aesthetic sense, but the bitterness and clarity employed by the artist (following the footsteps of the most bitter and clearest testimonies in art) to present the world of our everyday experience, our environment and ourselves? From my personal experience, I know that it is better to hint at the moments in our present time, addressed by the artist and adopted as subjects of his visual interpretations, than to speak at length and in great detail about his work. I leave you to form your own impressions about it.

Adopting a distance towards art and his living environment while remaining contemporary through the topics he addresses in his work (religion, ideology, social relations, consumer society), Asim Ðelilovic is both local and universal. As a designer (by education), artist and philo-sopher, his main interest within peripheryart is the experiences of a civilisation which he judges and, to which he belongs not as a designer inaugurating, innovating and implementing these same experiences, but as an active witness of those phenomena and tendencies within the civilisation itself, the resulting background of which leaves deep scars in the space of man's humanity. The artist's struggle for humanity and man once perceived to be a struggle for succession on the level of religion has today become a struggle for fans and consumers at the level of the economy. Religious iconic creations are today replaced with the trademarks of the consumer society.

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As seen by the artist, contemporary man as a follower and consumer has had all sense of responsibility and concern surgically removed. He does not create, establish and sustain (like he used to); he only uses, employs and spends. Others create for him, take care of him and are responsible on his behalf. The central focus of his life has become a game, fun and pleasure.

In this sense, the nature of art, for which C.G. Argan claimed that it had used to be “the source of ideas in the world of technology”, can no longer be found in production innovation, that is in ideas (because they now belong in the domain of science), but its “ideaness” can be recognised in the observations about the world of technology and the resulting nature of relationships in the immediate civilised environment.

As an advocator of the demythologisation of contemporary iconic culture, the artist exposes the true nature and background of the international mainstream media and real events and dethrones the idea of “progress” and “democracy”, presenting them as an illusion and image produced for the “broad masses” and endeavouring to disclose the real essence of “progress” by suggesting that the condition of leading and being led is dictated by plan and interest. This is, amongst others, carried out through the everyday CNN-isation and Hollywood-isation that substitutes our everyday reality with media-dictated reality.

Following in the footsteps of Chomski, Virilio, Baudrillard and Arendt, in the post-modernist world of declining (European) dialogue and growing (American) monistic futurism, the artist employs visual language to explore, analyse and interpret phenomena and tendencies of the “contemporary world”, recognising them in the integral space of historical human experience. His findings convince us that the instruments of the emergence of the “new world” do not mean a “better future” for man's destiny and that we are facing another painful experience, a fraud, blood and tears. Exhibited works show that the artist's visually expressed thoughts have not become any less intellectually fresh and authentic, affective and propulsive. In many ways, they are more powerful and their motifs that are intended to wake us and make us more aware of our own place and role in the world attack the eye with greater force than the target-oriented (advertising campaigns), aggressively typified and creatively insufficient advertisements. By working from the periphery, from Sarajevo ('little Jerusalem'), he convinces us that the

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“small and insignificant” do not exist, that the “centre of the world” is where we are and that the struggle for this centre of the world is fought here and by us.

This associative and engaged art does not know taboos and prohibitions. Openly and without scruples, the artist exposes the background of ideology and ideologisms, leaders and leadership (in the world without true leaders of ethical and moral values) and analyses the institution and abuse of social power, the torture of democracy and denunciation of the individual.

By drawing clear parallels between the known logic of the institution of religious iconography and the iconography of consumer society, the artist questions the authenticity of both and asks us whether the symbolism of the contemporary consumer icon is equal to the symbolism of the religious icon.

If so, and if the formula of both is the same, the investigation into the authenticity of both casts a shadow of doubt on the entire space of human experience and questions its structure. If this doubt is justified, we must ask ourselves, on what we have spent the time that was allotted to us and whether our efforts were in vain. We must find the answers to these questions alone.

In the artistic and interpretative sense, the instruments for expressing these points of view are inconsistent. Every new subject that is the focus of the artist's attention demands a different approach and a new material or technique. As a result, the artist does not foster a personal artistic expression of the kind that we find fragmented in a number of similar works. The consistency of “his manuscript” is evident in the subjects that interest him and the themes that he investigates. The artistic experience presented in this way displays a breadth of the artist's interpretative possibilities. The concepts of the assemblage, object, installation, light design, printed material, painted forms and photography are merely an additional proof of this. The artist declares that artistic language is what facilitates the interpretation of knowledge about the world that is possible only through direct experience. This type of contemporary art is documentary and the artist is a documentarist of the world that passes by.

From amidst the flotsomand jetsom of the world, washed on the artist's shores, he collects, recognises and connects those documents and vestiges

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of the material culture, which confirm its essence. Therefore, the project is based on the concept of documentary art and is carried out in accordance with the artist's understanding and handling of a found object that he incorporates into the structure of his work, inaugurating the idea of an observing, exploring, recognising and liberating artist rather than a creating artist. Consequently, his works are found objects, preserved imprints of human essence, proofs of human existence, activity and thoughts.

The artist becomes the person who sees. Nothing can escape his eyes.

He notices, records, unveils. Therefore, the object is not represented or depicted. It is what it is. Permeated with the experience of the environment and time from which it comes, it testifies to this experience and this time.

Together with us.

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Image from Hell (part one), object, 2014

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Aida Abadžić-Hodžić ARTICLES AS AUREOLES

Artistic activities of Asim Đelilović and his reflection (this paper talks about) is firstly about the system of values that the modern and contemporary society is based upon. This means that his artworks touch upon the question of the role and place that religion plays in life of a modern man; the question of cultural colonization by dominant world super-power, consequences of economic globalization, the role and ways of history interpretation in our areas, but it also emphasizes an alienation of the modern man and his disinterest to change the situation he is in. Perhaps, the following objects: “20th Century Man” (1998), “20th Century Man II” (2001), and “The Map of the World” (2000) would serve as paradigmatic examples of his feelings towards the situation of a modern man, which best illustrate the consumers, accumulated, lonely and isolated soul of a man of our time.

The man, whose head is in the place of a former aureole, pressed by the burden of those articles that make one and yet the same cultural boundary on the map of the World. People have already spoken about these places in his experiment and perhaps one that best describes Mr. Đelilović as an author is the one that breaks the myth of a contemporary iconic culture (B. Spahić).

When looking at his creative procedure, the way he creates his artwork, he undoubtedly goes from a perspective that each phenomenon in a contemporary civilization can be read and interpreted as a sign or system of signs. He goes on explaining that neither of those phenomena can stand on its own, but is always inserted into multiple relations, and introduced into a communication chain, offered to another and directed for usage- the phenomenon is an open work of art. (U. Eco)

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Since the brands of consumers society represent something that is dominant in his artwork plan of motif, the author does try to create “a new reality of painter’s space”, but deeply dives into the world of what has already been produced – he manipulates it, it recontextualizes it, never repeating the visible, but making it visible. (P. Klee). Đelilović mostly begins from a direct confrontation in the form of diptych and triptych. He does not put subjects, like some realists do, into an impossible context, but into an encounter where those subjects, at the form level, reveal clearly recognizable and common characteristics but of the subjects of totally opposite contents at the same time as well. This is when such encounter becomes totally unexpected, shocking, and carries the strength of a sudden revelation. The world form of nature, technology and culture lose its visual innocence and neutrality, and shows that in the world of modern advertising, marketing and aggressive media campaign, such choices do not exist in the process of creating.

What could possibly a pine-apple, hand-grenade and a bottle of St. Georg perfume have in common? The first belongs to the world of nature, the second to the world of technology, and the third to the world of highly profitable industry of cosmetics, fashion and design. They are all connected by the similarity of the outer face. But, as the author himself says, one should look at the phenomenon from the surface in order to understand the entirety (reference text from the Periphery art exhibition 1998/99). Inspired by this, he unobtrusively, sharply, and yet with smothered irony “scrapes” the dense layers of interwoven semantic levels that are hidden underneath our visual reality. Such confrontation is presented in the artworks from the series of “Instruments”, such as: A revolver in saddler with a photography of an American president Bush (“Work in progress”), a character of Pop John Pole II, the president Bush and Mike Jagger (“Triptych”, 2004), or open palms and an open book (“Works Book-Words Book”, 2002), a character of a covered woman and a girl who covers her naked body with the USA flag (“Behind”, 2002-2003). Author’s procedure is almost minimal, his interventions are ready-made and the composition is clear, examined and pure: which expands the field of connotation and gives the strength of universality to a fine art message.

Performance techniques are mostly related to the use of digital print, installation, objects, photography, and typography -the use of classic painting

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is very rare and usually carries a symbolic meaning, especially when eluded to the ancient world, classic civilizations underlining their “disproportion” to today’s moment (“Olimp”, 1999-2003). Or, again when new icons are placed into an ancient painter’s frame. Đelilović underlines the relationship with the subject world, with tangible realism, addressing them with an equal seriousness: this tendency is followed from the period of a new realism, and more specifically from the time of pop-art, the sixties period, when the art was connected to the means of massive communication. In this work, Đelilović creates a new code that needs to be discovered by an observer (creation of one such code is a contemporary art constant), and creation of this new code is done in a dialectic way, connecting it to an existing system of recognizable code. “In the light of vises”(2003), the aureole and the flash of metaphysics light, which in the time of baroque fine art carried dramatic chiaroscuro around the leaf of Christ, is now replaced by the flesh of camera which reflects the Coca Cola glass bottle. Sometimes the experiences of artwork determine how different senses are intertwined (the sense of touch, sound, and the visual sense).

This is shown in the artwork named “The Lords Love”, where the heart of Christ has been taken out from a dense net of thin, metal polls; or in the work “The Heart” through very intensive and suggestive use of material (stone covered with green moss).

Such cases of an explicit and conscious quote mark and ironically cite, through an apparent homage, the general places. Surely, in order for a viewer to understand an allusion, he must know the original “environment” and has to be a part of collective imagination. This is when the quote becomes inappropriate (just like the Coca Cola bottle installation with children’s pacifiers, next to a woman character with the child that looks like an ingrained imagery of the Mother of God – without the title, 1999). The quoting techniques expand our time concept in consumption of an artwork (entwining the quotes of the artwork developed in different historical and stylistics periods), connecting the expression time with the time of culture. (U. Eco) Popularization and vulgarization of the ready-made has marked its democratization: discovery of ready-made has taken away substantiality from art and has made it procedure-like. World has become flooded with an aesthetic atmosphere: civilized people of 21st century live in the time

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of aesthetic triumph, worshiping beauty; in the time of its idolatry (Y. Mitchaud).

In the art production, the artworks are replaced with mechanisms and procedures that function like artworks but produce the experience of art.

The intentions and attitudes become a substitute of an artwork. However, that is not the art’s end: it is the end of its domination over a particular subject. Thus, an experience producer, illusionist, or a wizard, successively becomes a creator of an impact, which is beautifully designed and appeared in the form of an icon spectacle, produced by media (@arko Pajić). Đelilović nurtures the connection with the subject world with an emphasized feeling for creation (which discovers his primary vocation) and through the challenge that he perceives the world of visual culture of a modern time as an unequivocal reflection of our time (Marilyn. AstroCuba, follow your instinct).

His engagement in subject and phenomenal reality questions the ultimate foundation of an argument that the aesthetic attitude towards life is always necessary and passive, and yet his alleged decrease on the level of senses (aesthetes) represents sustaining with the apparent and not the real world. Đelilović's work is not characterized by stressed aggressiveness as are today’s performances and happenings that radicalize relationship towards our own body, main theme, and media of contemporary expression. His expression is directed more towards what is mental rather then what’s emotional. He continues to palpate, in his work and in the liveliest way, the spirit of the spring student activism from 1968, through a condensed graphite, which was one of those that, at that time, appeared on the streets of Paris: “To be free – Means to be a part of.”

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Ice Box, object, 1999

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Slađana Golijanin PERIPHERY/HEADS/TAILS Friday, October 26th 2012 Asim Đelilović: Periphery/Heads/Tails, Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo, 7th June – 23th June 2012

How many shapes and forms does the post-Yugoslav age have? That is a question often asked by its inhabitants. The artist Asim Đelilović tackles the symbolic level of this phenomenon with Periphery/Heads/Tails which depraves reinterpretation of government and life in former Yugoslavia, confronting them with their own leftovers. Or confronting them with what is NOT left of them today, to be more precise. Đelilović (1964) is an assistant professor of Design at The Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo and is also a board member of the Sarajevo Green Design Festival. Being a designer, he has a visual approach to art, and in Periphery/Heads/Tails he uses design to intervene in items. Exhibition opened on 7th June this year at City Gallery Collegium Artisticum in Sarajevo and presents works called: Portraits, People's Hearts, War Lords, Behind Ideology and Cocacolanization. There are objects, installations, interventions with items (table, bed, trash-bin), photographs, digital prints, posters and assemblages, which reflect Đelilović's criticism towards local and regional post-Yugoslav transition towards global neoliberal capitalism.

Portraits and People's Hearts “penetrate” individual's internal world, with allegories of what is in their heads and hearts. Digital black and white prints called Trapped Mind (2011) and Earth of Which We Are Made of is Falling Apart… (2011) contain a medical scheme of a head full of barbed wire and a heart full of crumbled earth. The issue is clear: today's media and means of communication directly influence the human mind, they are overwhelming, filling up and they entrap the brain. People's Hearts (2000-2010) carries a similar message in a series of smaller objects in shape of the human heart and made of stone, clay, barbed wire, earth, branches, hay. The second

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vital human organ is also in danger. This work also contains documentation of the performance Hearts. A print shows candles set in shape of a human heart burning out in strong flames. This is another metaphor of personal “burnout”.

With War Lords, Đelilović tackles meanings and consequences of globalisation and endangerment of cultural identities. A Short History of Bosnia (2000) is a hat stand with a fez hanging, a hat and a cap with the Nike logo, implicating the exchange of authentic local characteristics with global ones.

The endangered old values are also presented in Sarajevo Surprise (19992000), a nest with two Kinder eggs inside with “surprise” written on them.

This time he also alludes to the changes towards Nature, in the context of exchanging natural product with a “colourful industrial lie”.

Behind Ideology also tackles the issue of drastic changes in the system of values. One of these works, from 1999 and without a name, shows a halfburned picture of Tito. The picture is half-burned with a massive Zippo lighter with the Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey logo, which is left opened underneath the picture. Tito's lower part is burned and only his head can be seen in the picture. Tito stands as a symbol of a defeated ideology, destroyed by the flames of a Zippo lighter, a symbol of the “advanced” and well-equipped American army. This comparison insists on criticism of neoliberalism which is swallowing old values of a different social organisation. The same issue is present in Cocacolanization. With play on words, (Coca-Cola and colonization become one word), artist uses this work to point out American, i.e. Western colonisation of other nations through their products and trade. Photo print American Red (2011) presents colonisation of human brain and invasion of American products.

Through a star-shaped hole on the forehead and chest of a human figure, the brain and the heart are filled with Coca-Cola corks, packs of Marlboro cigarettes and Kodak batteries.

It is evident that by choosing straightforward examples, the artist questions meanings and implications of individuals who left their mark on the modern world. By comparing today's values with those from our recent history, he underlines problems brought on by neoliberalism, with an emphasis on American market and propaganda. The easiest mark in this “conflict” is the individual.

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Let us focus on the question from the beginning and try to answer it.

Today there are numerous suburbs and inside shapes and there is no person.

Title of this exhibition Periphery/Heads/Tails immediately establishes the opposing positions, the personal and the individual are a trapped minority.

They are out of reach amongst numerous suburbs and inside shapes. Human heart and brain are poisoned by such acceptance of these products. There is no room for humanity, personality, individuality, identity. This is Ä?elilović's point and this is what makes this exhibition so important.

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Asim Đelilović

ARCHEOLOGY 2014 - 2015

Enyoj Bosnia, object, 2014

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Library, object, 2014

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Communication, object, 2014

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Sport, object, 2014

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Sport II, object, 2014

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Food, object, 2014

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Food II, object, 2014

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Mirror, object, 2014

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Art, object, 2014

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Landscape, object, 2014

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Supermarket, 2014

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Bag, object, 2014

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Drape, object, 2014

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Potpis

Asim Đelilović

ARTICLES 2000 - 2012

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On Human Hearts (Stone), object, 2000

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts (The ground sin), photo, 2009

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On Human Hearts (A ground without sin), object, 2009

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts, land art (photo), 2000

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On Human Hearts, object, 2000

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts, object, 2001

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On Human Hearts, object, 2001

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts, object, 2004

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On Human Hearts, object, 2005

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts, object, 2003

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On Human Hearts, object, 2007

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts, object, 2010

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On Human Hearts, object, 2003

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts, object, 2009

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On Human Hearts, object, 2010

Ar ticles

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On Human Hearts, object, 2001

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On Human Hearts (Eclipse), photo, 2011

Ar ticles

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(Left) On Human Hearts, performance, BrÄ?ko, june 2005 Prophet Light, object, 2002

Ar ticles

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Breakfast on the grass, object (detail), 2005

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Breakfast on the grass, object (reinterpretation), 2012

Ar ticles

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Poched egg (Kinder Surprisse), object, 2010

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Marilyn (Monroe), object, 2001

Ar ticles

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Asim Đelilović

BEHIND IDEOLOGY 1998 - 2011

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No title, object, 1999

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No smoking, installation, 1999

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Comrad Tito..., digital print, 2002

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Between Ideology, photo, 2002

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Place - Time / Bugojno 1977 - 1997, photo, 2001

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About Freedom, (Will the Freedom be able to sing as the slaves sang about her - B. Miljkovic), object, 40cm, 1999

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After Paradise, object, 1999

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The Survival Art, object, 1999

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In God We Trust, digital print, 1999

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The people that has that kind of youth‌, installation, 2002

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A Short History of Bosnia, objects, 2000

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A Short History of Bosnia )part two), print on paper, 2007

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Sarajevo Surprise, object, 1999

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Astro Cuba, object (photo), 2000

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Made in Paradise, object, 2002 / 2003

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American Freedom, object, 2002

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Behind, photo, 2002 / 2003

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American Dream, object, 2003

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Over Love, object, 2002

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Prophet Light, photo print, 2002

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Prophet Light (part two), digital print, 2003

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No title (Based on work of Robert Mapelthorpe), digital print, 70x50cm, 2011

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Asim Đelilović

C O C AC O L A N I Z AT IO N 1998 - 2011

Ar ticles

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Mother with child (reunion), instalation, 1999

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World Map, object, 2000

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Iconostasis, objects, 1999

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Last World Idea, assemblage, 1999

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American Red Star, assemblage, 1999

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American Red Star II (based on Robert Mapplethorpe, M0303), photo print, 2011

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American Red Star III (based on Robert Mapplethorpe), photo print, 2011

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20th Century Man, object, 70x100cm, 1998

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20th Century Man (part two), object, 70x100cm, 2001

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At the Olymp, oil on canvas, 140x200cm, 1999-2003

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Ever - Never, photo 2x(50x70)cm, 2003

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Asim Đelilović

INSTRUMENTS 2000 - 2007

Potpis

C o c a c ol an i z at i on

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Taken, installation, 2005

Inst r u ments

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Between, installation, 2007

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Work in progress, installation, 2004

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Leaders, photo print, 3x(28x41)cm, 2004

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The Golden Spoon, objects, 2005

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The Spoon, object, 2005

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Coexistence, digital print, 2000

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United (from 3rd-4th), flag 240x70cm, 2004

Inst r u ments

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Not for everybody, photo, 2004

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Life, photo, 2005

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Fine (The End), work is based on Jacques PrĂŠvert IL NE FAUT PAS..., and matches from Nederland, video, 2005

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IL NE FAUT PAS...

Il ne faut pas laisser les intellectuels Jouer avec les allumettes Parce que Messieurs quand on le laisse seul Le monde mental Messssieurs N'est pas du tout brillant Et sitôt qu'il est seul Travaille arbitrairement S'érigeant pour soi-même Et soi-disant généreusement en I'honneur des travailleurs du bâtiment Un auto-monument Répétons-le Messssssieurs Quand on le laisse seul Le monde mental Ment Monumentalement.

Jacques Prévert Editions Gallimard Copyright Fatras succession Jacques Prévert

Inst r u ments

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Potpis

Asim Đelilović

PORTRAITS 2009 - 2013

Potpis

A rche ol o g y

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Por t raits

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Potpis

Asim Đelilović

SECRETS 2000 - 2014

Potpis

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Window (Sky), object, 69x91cm, 2000

S e crets

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Window (Sky), object, 69x91cm, 2000

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Justice, photo print, 70x50cm, 2014

S e crets

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The Last Sapper, happening (digital print), 19. 07. 2012

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S e crets

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When the Saints go Marchin’in (part two), photo print, 2011

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Srebrenica 1995 - 2005, installation (video and objects), july 2005

S e crets

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Napoleon, object (photo Damir Ĺ agolj), 2007

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The Contemporary Art, installation (photo), 2007

S e crets

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Works Book - Words Book, object, 2002

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Pro memoria, installation, 2005

S e crets

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No title (based on work by Robert Mapplethorpe), calligraphy by Nusret ÄŒolo, 2011

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In Heaven - on Earth, video (print), 2013

S e crets

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Potpis

Asim Ä?elilović

WA R L O R D S 1999 - 2014

Potpis

A rche ol o g y

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20 / 21, digital print, 1999

War L ords

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Medicine, object, 1999

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Follow Your Instinct, photo, 1999

War L ords

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The Justice, object, 2001

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North - South, object (photo), 1999

War L ords

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Cold War, object, 1999 - 2004

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First Aid, object, 1999

War L ords

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When the Saints go Marchin’in (left), object, 2x(55x75)cm, 1999

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When the Saints go Marchin’in (right), object, 2x(55x75)cm, 1999

War L ords

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London, Paris, New York,.... like Gaza, photo, july - august 2014

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War L ords

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Big Bang, photo print, 70x70cm, 2012

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SUPPORT Admir Hadžiemrić, Nusret Kulovac, Ibrahim Odobašić, Senad Halilović, Edin Odobašić, Enes Topoljak, Mehmed Akšamija, Sefir Gasal, Aćif Hodović, Sanda Popovac, Stjepan Roš, Jasmina Hopić, Fatima Maslić, Ibrahim Halilović, Nihad Fuško, Hasan Gasal, Galib Šišić, Muhsin Mašić, Mirko Adžaip, Asim Sadibašić, Dragana Baner, Ognjenka Finci, Branislav Marić, Tarik Jasenković, Zavičajni muzej Travnik, Arhiv srednje Bosne Travnik, Safet Delić, Mubevir Gegić, Amir Halilović, Samir Halilović, Ševala Alibegović, Derviš Alibegović, Arif Šakrak, Semir Mujkić, Boriša Gavrilović, Nenad Veličković, Enis Logo, Dragana Antonić, Udruženje likovnih umjetnika primjenjenih umjetnosti i dizajnera Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, SCCA Sarajevo, Economic Vitez, Adnan Zolota, Dževad Huseinspahić, Senad Hrnjić, Damir Šagolj, Galerija Java Sarajevo DTP Boriša Gavrilović Sarajevo, 2016