Case
oil on canvas, digital print
114 cm x 114 cm x 4.5 cm, 29 cm x 29 cm
2017
The installation Case illustrates Otašević’s characteristic method of work: remaking of non-artistic materials, popular urban objects, images that belong to local or international popular and everyday culture, media clichés, cultural stereotypes. From the mid-seventies until today, Otašević has shown and developed, in some rudimentary form, a tendency to rearrange something that is recognizable, so the wall installation Case, combines Malevich’s Black Square and Kharms’s Cases into a strange remix.
In Dušan Otašević’s works, there are specific phenomena and relations associated with the art of post-production, which includes sampling and remixing in the context of the avant-garde, pop art and postmodernism, such as appropriation, editing, citation, recycling. The fundamental concept of the remix culture is based on the act of appropriation and use of the existing material so that the artist creates something new, in accordance with their wishes. His style is often characterized as a specific variant of pop art in the Yugoslav, socialist-modernist art context, where the artist does not process branded products, but products of everyday general use. The art of Dušan Otašević is socially committed and in his works he combines criticism and irony. With the reduced technological/craft procedure in his works, he consciously demystifies the process of creation. They are mostly multimedia objects with wood as the dominant material.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-381/1.11.2019.
Inventory No. 1663
Photo: Cultural Centre of Belgrade
Selected Bibliography:
Dušan Otašević: Gozba, Mar. 27 – Apr. 22, 2018, catalogue of the solo exhibition, text by Jasmina Čubrilo, Nadežda Petrović Art Gallery, Čačak, 2018
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dušan Otašević (1940, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts (now Faculty of Fine Arts) in Belgrade in 1966, in the class of prof. Ljubica Cuca Sokić. Since 1965, he presented his works done in various media (paintings, objects, installations, drawings, graphics, collages) at about fifty solo and more than a hundred and fifty group exhibitions in the country and abroad. Since the beginning of the seventies, he has also done theatre scenography. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 2000 to 2006. In 2003 he was elected a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and became a full member in 2009. Since 2011, he has been the director of the SASA Gallery. His works are part of numerous museum and gallery collections (Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, National Museum in Belgrade, Belgrade City Museum, SASA Art Collection, Collection of the House of the Army of Serbia, Zepter Museum in Belgrade, Fine Arts Gallery in Osijek, etc.) and many private collections in the country and abroad. He received a Captain Miša Anastasijević Charter for his contribution to culture (2014), the 18th Nadežde Petrović Memorial Award (Čačak, 1994), the October Salon Award for painting in 1993, etc. Lives and works in Belgrade.