THIS WORLD IS YOURS, BUT OURS, BUT YOURS

Zoran Srdić Janežič understands sculpture as a lyrical medium, with which he can thoroughly expose social criticism, personal views on relations and ways of living in a modern society. His artistic interests are extended to projects where he creates a wider conceptual art system. In it, sculptures can also be part of installations, performances, body art, video art, 3D projections; in several projects, the artist intensively devotes himself to drawing as the basis of artistic compositions, as it was with the drawing that he realized some kind of intimate (minimalized) collage of everyday life. The sculptor actively works also with puppets, which often constitute the basic or material core of his sculpture. Srdić Janežič is also a writer of essays in the field of theory and some modernist segments of the history of fine arts. The artist‘s creative guidance, and above all the guidance of his critical thoughts, is, as he points out, the “strife between worth and value”, that is, human life is a value, but it has no worth in itself, as it is not something that can be sold. Man achieves reality or his own value only if he acts from his own freedom, rooted in spontaneity and communication, oriented to the freedom of another. In this relationship, however, it is art that receives its own freedom, the spontaneity and sharpness represented by the freedom of
expression as the constant need for “playful metaphysics”, after experimenting beyond rigidly established mental trails and the realization of borderline situations in which a person experiences limitations which directly determine the conditions of his freedom and justify his actions as values.

The sculptor has produced two sculptures with a common title
for the exhibition The world is yours, but ours, but yours (2018) – the image of a wild boar and the image of a stag. The boar as a living being means value because of its essence, yet its meat is purely value. Both animals are wild, primarily linked to nature, life and freedom, but within modern living antihumanism, where the worth is the essence of being not only of social systems or inter-societal understandings but also of individuals, both living creatures are much worthier when dead – the value of life becomes the worth of meat. The sculptures are made of plaster, shaped with soft fabric materials and foam; with a mechanism built in their interior that enables movement, namely, on the limbs are hung weighted metal buckets that descend on a figure of a man, helplessly lying on the ground, which at first glance acts humorously, then ironically and in the end even grotesque. The pressure or densifying of the weight of existence and searching for meaning within being provokes a sound, an obtrusive inhuman scream of burdens of multiple responsibilities that we do not want to see or recognize today – the worth overpowers all value, life and living are meaningful only (how ironic) when we determine their worth.

From the catalogue of the exhibition Densifying: dr. Sarival Sosič, curator

Artistic concept, construction of the mechanism and sculptural objects: Zoran Srdić Janežič | Programming and electronics: Matic Potočnik, Blaž Berdnik | Curatorial guidance: Sarival Sosić | Producer: Jana Putrle Srdić | Text: Sarival Sosić | Producer: Institute for Arts Gulag

The exhibition project was developed for group curated exhibition Densifying – producer: Mestna Galerija Ljubljana