Section: Artist

Nenad Bogdanovic: Man Gallery

Nenad Bogdanovic (1993).
Man Gallery.Photo: The artist.

“I am a Networker Gallery by the name of Nenad Bogdanovic. My body is a Networker Gallery. My body is a space for exhibition of artistic works. My body is a space for the installation of exhibitions. I am a gallery.

I, the Man Gallery Nenad Bogdanovic, was born - originate in 1955 in Odzaci, Yugoslavia.
My body - the gallery - is already an artistic institution but it is an artistic project that has not been commercialised. Taking the basic fact, well known to everybody, during the last years, even decades, classical art and exhibition spaces are becoming non-interesting and boring. People are walking through the gallery without any interess. Artistic power of exhibited works is too weak for people to wish to communicate with them. Reason is possibly, a great amount of informations that people are exposed to in every moment. Inspite that, they are not taking it intimately and they are shortened for communication between them. This has influenced me to bring something new in my artistic work. I have decided to create a totally different gallery, something that won`t be lifeless and boring. Audience must be provoked to think about art work. They should be animated, taking part in creation of an art work. This is the only way for them to like the art work. My body - the gallery is not a cold, insensitive space, a room - an exhibit. My body - the Man gallery - is an exceptionally communicative exhibitional room - object. It is not closed and limited in co-operation with other artists and artistic groups interested in exhibiting and collective creative work and communication. I, the Man Gallery Nenad Bogdanovic, am not a selling gallery of artistic works. My body - the gallery - does not organise buing and selling artistic projects and exibitions. It does not trade with artists, exhibitors and collaborators. It does not deal in their artistic works and projects. The relations between me, the Man Gallery Nenad Bogdanovic, and many artists and co-operating exhibitors is exceptionally honest and mutually open and sincere. They, the artists collaborators, refuse the former buying-selling system of the most of today`s galleries and museums, and gladly exhibit and co-operate with me, with my body, the Man Gallery. With the very act of exhibiting and communicating with me, with my body - the Man Gallery, all the artists and many other known and unknown collaborators, in the best way express their attitude towards the art itself, their audience and problems in the contemporary art and show their relations with them."

Nenad Bogdanovic, 1993

References

Nenad Bogdanovic has been producing unique forms in art since 1975 with participation in over 500 exhibitions that span more than 40 countries. In 1992-95 Serbia had trade blockades imposed as a result of the policies of Slobodan Milosovic’s regime. As part of the anti-embargo movement taking hold among artists throughout Serbia he began the two activities that continue to inform his practice today – Networker Gallery and Man Gallery. Declaring himself a gallery he invites the viewer to paint and install objects on his body, often documenting the participative act on Polaroid film. The naming and transforming of his physical being into a site for art imbues the activity with indices of process and invests the human form with a cultural significance that extends discourse beyond the representational and anthropologic. In 1998 he founded Multimedial Art Studio (MAS) and by the end of the year had founded the International Multimedial Art Festival/IMAF. IMAF takes place annually and combines a Performance Art meeting with an accompanying exhibition of Performance documents contributed by artists worldwide. He is Director of MAS/IMAF art archive and in 2003 represented Serbia at the Venice Biennale. During enforced military service in the Serb-Croat war he was, along with Aleksandar Jovanovic, a founder of the Serbian Network Coalition of Artists Against War.