EXHIBITION "Montenegrin Beauty" LIVING IN " LITTLE DOSE" Igor Rakcevic’s series of graphics on cardboard, comprising the “wall” segment of the installation “Untitled”, can be described as “environmental.” This is because the medium and motif, as well as the visual and semantic complexity of this piece, evoke and arrange the ambience of everyday life, the artist’s immediate surroundings, the life of everyday people--the “laboring class”. The base (for graphic imprint) of this work is cardboard, an appropriate attribute of that ambience and its explicit indicator. In a society where for years packaging and repackaging and supply of dodgy goods have been inevitable as “imposed” and unofficially legitimate forms of “running a business”, cardboard is the leitmotif both in “business transactions” and “decor” in the homes of average citizens. Being a “cheap material,” cardboard is their “distinctive mark” and “status” symbol”. Cardboard has become almost a stigmata of society, a feature of exertion or misery that one receives and senses with the body and that is also capable of receiving that body itself. Namely, cardboard “naturally” invites and receives “poor” techniques (the graphic imprint) and portraits of anonymous representatives of a broad population. These group portraits are therefore images of an anonymous mass, not individuals but types whose primary identification derives from their very affiliation to that mass. The imprinted details are neutral, “mute,” abstract geometric shapes, little yellow elephants, bright motifs from the infant world, packs of cigarettes and the original VAT logo. These are abbreviation of the new, reforming and healing Montenegrin “smart solution” that is supposed to come as salvation but, in fact, appears as just “one of a million”: the Value Added Tax. These are levelled, brought to equivalent symbolic and actual rank, acting as equal segments of the same, collage-like, oddly fitting patchwork reality. Regular repetition of these motifs, besides being a sign of the artist’s consistency or his preference, is a step into the zone of the inexorable, inevitable, into the state of being trapped in a strange kaleidoscope of things equally fictional and piercingly realistic. The shampoo-sized dose of home-made grape brandy may seem a witticism of a resourceful mind, a marketing coup, a smart souvenir that offers the national product in modern, plastic pack. In further emphasis, a scene from the heroic national past adorns the label (a detail from ^ermak’s “Wounded Montenegrin”). However, this witty pleasure in--or from--a small package becomes “controlled pleasure,” dosed enjoyment not as a mark of self-control and “good manners” nor as an example of an actual need to economize or “contain appetites”. It is a reflection of the habit of thinking and working “on a small scale” and randomly, according to the dictates of the local “market”. Instead of lengthy, relaxed, sedentary consumption, pleasure intended to be strong and enduring, this becomes a small-calibre pleasure, “to take out” for fast consumption even while walking, like light alcohol-free beverages made for anybody and everybody. Wholly inappropriately, grape brandy, the pride of our national economy, is offered in an unappealing, plastic package. Wholly inappropriately, too, the package is decorated with a scene from our glorious Montenegrin history: “Examples of Humanity and Courage”*. Such images can’t transcend small packages or any kind of standardization of a mass-produced kind; they rather tend to preserve their exclusivity and uniqueness. The usual contents of such packs (shampoos, products promoting “personal hygiene” or for embellishment of one’s looks), is here replaced with grape brandy; i.e. the package is “abused.” It appears as a set-up, as an un-pleasant surprise, coming “out of the blue” when we least expect or want it. Thus it becomes redundant, useless. The “wrong” package is actually a token of a shift of content or inappropriate interchange ability of content/sense, and it works “towards the inner meaning”. This is a “universal package” that can “come in handy for anything,” a breathless deception, a frivolous act, a “short-run” seduction. This is just another example of the futile resourcefulness of an imaginative nation, an appropriate form of self-advertisement and a true measure of its lifestyle. It is an indication of our limitation to small portions insufficient for personal fulfilment. These are apportioned pleasures in a limited number of episodes, in mini-doses, a “resolved” entirety of sensations that are supposed to have qualities of duration and quantity. But they offer only the delusion of enjoying completely the local spices, the beauty of the national product which is supposed to be enjoyment “with no residual hangover”. The act of putting the little portions of brandy in glass bottles is a repetition of this very method, illustrating the meaning and sense of such packaging of a famous national product. Namely, traditional decanters for domestic drinks are filled with shampoo-sized doses of brandy, which seems “unreasonable” and without purpose. Actually, it is a local mannerism, a mark of local cleverness: “repackaging” twofold packaging. “Hard covers” are supposedly protective of what is already “well packaged,” ready to be opened and consumed. That is the way of “marketing” of natural beauties and authentic national products. Double security, double filling is not a sign of additional precautions, of protection of precious content but an unreasonable gesture of putting things where they don’t belong, where they are out of reach, blocked, useless. The content intended for consumption or use becomes a mere decoration in a bottle, a bizarre new Montenegrin souvenir that is to be drunk only with the eyes or “dry.”
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