Lot
25
Tito (1), After Slobodan "Boki" Radanovic from the late 1950s (based on the recollection of my father, who said his paintings looked "like maps, but not of Yugoslavia...")
Digital photo image, 2010
76,2 x 101,6 cm
1/3
Estimate
$4 450
The "paintings" in These Paintings—each created in the colours of the Yugoslavian flag, and all titled "Tito"—are fakes. They are photographic illusions of painting created entirely in Photoshop. The artist’s mother, father and aunt each recall and interpret the abstract paintings of one of their friends in Yugoslavia, who worked and tried to exhibit through the 1950 and 1960, the "golden" years of socialism. Removed from sight by authorities and destroyed forty years ago, the artist (re)animates the clues in order to question the nature and value of individual artistic expression, collective interpretation and the influence of political ideology in the realm of art.
Biographical note
Born in Novi Sad (Serbia) and living in Montreal (Quebec) since 2005, Milutin Gubash has mounted exhibitions in Quebec, Canada, the United States, and Europe, including recent solo shows in Montreal at the Musée d’art contemporain in Montréal (LOTS, 2007), and Optica (Born Rich, Getting Poorer, 2009), Galerie 3015 in Paris and RLBQ in Marseille (Which Way to the Bastille?, 2008), and participation in the Manif d’art 5 at VU in Quebec City (Hotel Tito, 2010). Beginning in 2011 and continuing through 2013, a ten-year survey of his practice is being organized by the Musée de Joliette, Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge), and Rodman Hall Art Centre (St. Catharines). His work has been acquired by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the National Bank of Canada, the Nickel Arts Museum, and is part of private collections.