Paris Past

Bon ménage...

Lana Čmajčanin
Ivan Moudov
Alban Muja

Group show

Stories of friendships between artists, curators, dealers, writers, theoreticians and collectors are often romanticized and they always lead us to feeling almost mysterious, overwhelmed with eclecticism, stirring up emotions stretching between mutual recognition or contempt. Many such stories of friendship are written posthumously and this is probably also the reason why we perceive many of them with a slight detachment yet we silently wish we could have been privy to them.
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However, looking at this particular project, it should be stressed that friendship is not the concept of the exhibition but rather creates a context in which the exhibition was developed. As mentioned above, friendship between artists often results in their mutual recognition of interests and this aspiration very often leads to collaborations. The Bon ménage... project is exactly the result of this. We could say that there is a causality between artists’ friendships and their joint interest in the context of their practices, what directly tackles the issues that affect the public and private sphere alike. This is symbolically suggested by the title, which implies that relations between artists trigger a chain reaction and cause a shift in the selection process as well. In other words, the exhibition dismisses the framework of a classic thematic presentation by rejecting a dominant theme and calling for a break, with the aim of self-reflection and a focus on particular artworks. Yet the exhibition does not seek to be a compendium of three estranged monoliths, but rather to showcase three artistic positions, three artworks, sharing the idea that an understanding of social, political, cultural or economic change can only come from an awareness and reflection of our environment.

Text by Tevž Logar