The work of Mladen Stilinović, one of the most vivacious proponents of present-day conceptual art, is brilliantly represented by his room installations such as Red-Pink. The topic of the installation Red-Pink, which is very much one with the tautological 1970s, are the two colors, red and pink, and the manipulation of these two colors and the signs that they sublimate. Tautology and ideology
interest Stilinoviæ, above all if they can be connected up with humor. And so
it is not uncommon for red to be found combined with blue and white, the colors of the national flag, and also on the artist’s underwear, simulating a
sportsware stripe, and on his sexual organ as well. Urging the desymbolization of red, the sacred color of Communism, Stilinović’s interventions sometimes transformed it into the light-minded and watered-down version of red-pink. And while he systematically dethrones red, the reverse happens with pink. Here, he elegantly puts a color out of favor in the age of Modernism back into the rather stagnant aesthetic system, mocking its rigidity and orthodoxy.

Mladen Stilinović

* 1947 Beograd, SCG
lives and works in Zagreb, HR

Exhibitions (selection)

2005 „Artist at Work“, Galerija ŠKUC, Ljubljana, SLO
´
2003 „Systemi individuali“ – La Biennale di Venezia, 50. Esposizione Internazionale d´Arte, Venezia, I

2002 „In Search of Balkania“, Neue Galerie, Graz, A

2001 „The Cynicism of the Poor, Muzej suvremene umjetnosti [Museum of Contemporary Art], Zagreb, HR

2001„Ausgetraumt...“, Secession, Wien, A

1999 Aspekte / Positionen. 50 Jahre Kunst aus Mitteleuropa 1949-1999, MMKSLW. Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Palais Liechtenstein, 20er Haus, A

1999 „After the Wall“, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, S

1994 „Geometry of Cakes“, Mala galerija, Ljubljana, SLO

1992 „The Boundery Rider“ – Biennale of Sydney, AUS

1980 „Sing“, Galerija suvremene umjetnosti [Contemporary Art Gallery], Zagreb, HR

selected bibliography:

Spomenka Nikitović, Mladen Stilinović, VAL, SCCA-Zagreb, 1978

Marina Gržinić: „Thesis: Mladen Stilinović – Strategies of the Cinical Mind“ in: Fiction Reconstructed, Edition Selene, Wien, 2000

Mladen Stilinović. The Cynicism of the poor, Nada Beroš, Tihomir Milovac (eds.), Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb, 2001

Mladen Stilinović. Pain. Tihomir Milovac, Branka Stipančić (eds.), Muzej suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb, 2003

Mladen Stilinović. Artist at Work. Alenka Gregorčič, Branka Stipančić (eds), Galerija ŠKUC, Ljubljana, 2005