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ST | Branimir Marković Street
ST | Branimir Marković Street
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
Branimir Marković Street, Rijeka, 2013/2015, photography, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 20 x 30 cm
ST | Nature & Society
ST | Nature & Society
Nature & Society, 2002, Video, Performance Zagreb MSU, documentation, 3:58 min, edition: 3 + 2 AP
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/2c_Tolj_videostill_450px.jpg
Nature & Society, 2002, photography, C-Print, edition: 3 + 2 AP, 40 x 50 cm
Performance Nature & Society presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, was based on a spectacular act of relativisation of the traditional family, and, in a broader sense, also of social hierarchy. In the performance the naked Slaven Tolj assumed the demeanor of a fighting animal and stubbornly attacking his own shadow on the wall for several minutes using the antlers of a dear until they were completely destroyed. He inherited the antlers as a symbolic legacy from his grandfather, who took it during the Second World War from a package of official presents designated to the Italian fascist leader Mussolini. Tolj used this rather absurd starting situation for a compact and aesthetically pointed criticism of the historic residua of Balkan nationalism, the recent war events connected with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and last but not least the patriarchal hierarchy latently present in the Croatian (mostly catholic) milieu.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/priroda i drustvo_450px.jpg
Nature & Society, 2002, photography, C-Print, edition: 3 + 2 AP, 40 x 50 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/STprirodaIdrustvo450px.jpg
ST | Personal meaning
ST | Coordination
Coordination, Dubrovnik, 2004, C-Print, 3 + 2AP, 21 x 21 cm
To a nullified, stripped creature which has abandoned collective defence from the unbearable perspective of being, nothing else remains but to find a personal meaning of the world, make “his life a garden different from the garden of my fathers.” In that effort a creative personality is reflected, an artist capable of dismantling social and aesthetic conventions, including his own ego. Thus his work becomes his “private religion.” It cannot offer permanent comfort before the notion of death, but abolishing a romantic image of the self and a scene of an abyss open up a view into infinity.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/slaven.lazareti_Kopie450px.jpg
A tattoo of the logo of Rijeka’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka 2013, C-Print, 3 + 2 AP, 19 x 19 cm
2013 Slaven Tolj inscribed on his skin the logo of the Rijeka museum he now runs, just like long time ago he branded himself with the stamp of Lazareti. Sometimes he is more powerful than his destiny by accepting to push the same stone farther and farther, with an awareness of the senselessness of the new situation.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/slaven.rijeka450px.jpg
ST | no title: Valencia - Dubrovnik - Valencia
ST | Dubrovnik-Valencia-Dubrovnik
Valencia - Dubrovnik - Valencia (no title), 2003, 40 x 10 cm, one photography with 3 images, baryta paper, Performance Valencia 2003, edition: 3 + 2 AP
In his performance Dubrovnik-Valencia-Dubrovnik Slaven Tolj looks like having recently returned from the battlefield, Tolj is undressed to the waist and peels off 12 layers of clothing. Each layer has black buttons attached, as mementos of perished friends. From the final layer, he tears off one black button and sews it directly to his chest as an ironic medal. He also uses light repeatedly, not only as a metaphor for the pursuit of enlightenment but also, in its paler shades, to convey entropy and melancholy.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/SLAVEN-Puca002_450px.jpg
Valencia - Dubrovnik - Valencia (no title), 2003, photography, edition: 3 + 2 AP, 30 x 40 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/SLAVEN-Puca004_450px.jpg
Valencia - Dubrovnik - Valencia (no title), 2003, photography, edition: 3 + 2 AP, 18 x 25,5, cm
ST | Globalisation
ST | Globalisation
Globalisation, 2001, Video, Performance NY, documentation, 14:08 min, edition: 4 +2AP
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/globalisation_video1_450px.jpg
Globalisation, 2001, Video, Performance NY, documentation, 14:08 min, edition: 4 +2AP
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/globalisation_video2_450px.jpg
Globalisation, 2001, 20 x 26,7 cm, photography, Lambda print, Performance NY, edition: 4 + 2AP
Tolj carried out the radical action Globalisation at the festival “Body and the East” organized by the Exit Art Gallery in New York. He mixed a hardly digestible “global cocktail” from a bottle of whisky and a bottle of vodka, which he kept drinking until almost absolute self-destruction. At the end of performance the artist’s limp body was taken to a hospital by an ambulance and the halls of the gallery were stricken with chaos and panic. The performance and its risky catharsis (Tolj subsequently went into a coma and spent several days in intensive care), by exaggerating the mentality of the “East”, purposely torpedoed the principles of “Western” openness and political correctness.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/Globalisation450px.jpg
Globalisation, 2001, 20 x 26,7 cm, photography, Lambda print, Performance NY, edition: 4 + 2AP
Globalisation, 2001, 20 x 26,7 cm, photography, Lambda print, Performance NY, edition: 4 + 2AP
Globalisation, 2001, 20 x 26,7 cm, photography, Lambda print, Performance NY, edition: 4 + 2AP
Globalisation, 2001, 20 x 26,7 cm, photography, Lambda print, Performance NY, edition: 4 + 2AP
ST | Food for Survival
ST | Food for Survival
Food for Survival, 1993, Video documentation, photography, edition: 4+2AP
The artist created this performance with his wife at the time, Marija Grazio, in Helsinki; it was entitled Food for Survival. At the time, Sarajevo, Slaven’s former city, was under siege, just as Dubrovnik had been a few short years earlier. During that time, aid would be dropped on those cities in the form of dehydrated food products that could be made into a soup by adding water; the packet read “food for survival.” The two artists mixed the soup and covered their bodies with it, eating it off of one another. The two combine an act of desperation (consuming to survive) with an act of love, and the stark contrast between the two highlights the struggle for survival that the food embodies or represents.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/performance.1_450PX.jpg
ST | Interrupted Games
ST | Interrupted games
Interrupted Games, 1993, series of 2 photographies, each 50 x 50 cm, Edition 3+ 2 AP
Interrupted Games is featuring children playing squash against the rear facade of the Dubrovnik cathedral. One image captures the exact moment when the ball gets stuck in one of the volutes of a pillar capital, with the children’s movements captured in action. The other photograph is a zoom-in on the trapped ball, somehow mimicking the bullets of the Yugoslav war that are called to mind by the holes on the façade, next to other imprisoned balls. This public square, called Bunićeva Poljana, was a frequent target for attacks by Serbian snipers during the siege of Dubrovnik, and led children to abandon their favourite playground for many months. Therefore, with a hidden sense of gravity, these images confront the great history of the city and its tragic fate, with anecdotal stories that both bring children’s play to an end. The work is subtitled Pax, Vobis, Memento mori qui, Ludetis pilla (Peace be with you. Remember you are mortal, you, who play with a ball), which enhances the metaphor contained in the game.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/tolj_interrupted-games450px.jpg
Interrupted Games, 1993, series of 2 photographies, each 50 x 50 cm, Edition 3+ 2 AP
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/INTERRUPTED-GAMES_Tolj450px.jpg
ST | Vraćam se za 5 minuta
ST | Vracam se za 5 minuta
Vraćam se za 5 minuta, 2011, photography, 5+2 AP, 11,5 x 16,6 cm
The image documents Slaven Tolj‘s participation in a performance festival VIZUALNIH 2011 in Momjan which he limited his contribution to a commonplace message, “I’ll be back in 5 minutes,” scribbled on a piece of paper and left in the space allocated to his performance. In the physical absence of the author, withdrawal replaced action, leaving narcotics, cigarettes and a glass of alcohol, to reveal the tormented passion of passivity.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/tolj_Vracam se_450px.jpg
ST | Patriot
ST | Patriot
Patriot, 2007, photography, edition: 4 + 2 AP, 50 x 40 cm
Patriot was performed at the opening of Tolj’s solo exhibition by the same title at Gelrija Nova in Zagreb. While the Croatian national hymn was playing, Tolj kept saluting to it using different hand positions – gestures that were used in salute to it during the course of history by fascists, partisans, the Yugoslav military and, more recently, the Croatian military. The ideological mediation of patriotism through theprocess of different gesticulations turns into an automatic repetition, a loop of emptied out forms.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/patriot450px.jpg
Patriot, 2007, photography, edition: 4 + 2 AP, 50 x 40 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/patriot1_450px.jpg
Patriot, 2007, photography, edition: 4 + 2 AP, 50 x 40 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/patriot2_450px.jpg
Patriot, 2007, photography, edition: 4 + 2 AP, 50 x 40 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/Patriot3_450_px.jpg
Patriot, 2007, photography, edition: 4 + 2 AP, 50 x 40 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/Patriot1_450px.jpg
Patriot, 2007, photography, edition: 4 + 2 AP, 50 x 40 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/Patriot4_450_px.jpg
Patriot, 2007, photography, edition: 4 + 2 AP, 50 x 40 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/Patriot2_450_px.jpg
ST | Map of the City
ST | Map of the City
MAP OF THE CITY, 2006/14, information board, edition: 3+ 2 AP, 140 x 100 cm
Map of the City, with a notice board-cum-summary of the information places in the city that inform its guests about the destruction of the war. Now, however, in the places of signs of shells that have fallen and ruined parts of the city, we find signs for cafés and restaurants, that, consistently with the original meaning of the notice board, suggest menace, suggest that the city is occupied with an unnatural invasion, physically blocked, and hence the damage to the spirituality of its space.
MAP OF THE CITY, 2006/14, information board, edition: 3+ 2 AP, 140 x 100 cm
ST | I'am dangerous
ST | I’am dangerous
I’am dangerous, kill me in front of my children’s eyes, Performance, 2011, photography, edition: unique + 2AP, 30 x 40 cm
Tolj stopped before a blank white wall with one sentence pencilled in the middle: “I’am (sic) dangerous, kill me in front of my children’s eyes.” While he is sitting in front oft he written words, the sound of a children-toy is playing. Inspired by the contradiction of violently killing Osama bin Laden in front of his daughter, and a sense of disgrace for what that child must now live through, Tolj said he wanted to express how “media influences our perceptions of values in reality,” and sometimes “gives us a superficial depth.”
I’am dangerous, kill me in front of my children’s eyes, Performance, 2011, photography, edition: unique + 2AP, 30 x 40 cm
I’am dangerous, kill me in front of my children’s eyes, Performance, 2011, photography, edition: unique + 2AP, 30 x 40 cm
ST | To My Three Z
ST | TO MY THREE Z
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
“Subject of my artistic work in the work CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS is the process of social and media
constructions of political and corporate interests through a combination of ambiguous narratives,
operationalisation of their power in the cultural politics and extreme reducibility to the capitulation of sanity
before the policy of acquiring capital."
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
With the series TO MY THREE Z. CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS Slaven Tolj refers to a specific current issue in Dubrovnik, his hometown and main artistic topic. He has been leading Srđ je naš! – a civic action and initiative, which loudly echoed by seeking out a referendum and which has been initiated as the opposition to the construction of the new golf course on Srđ, the only free surface for future urban expansion of the city. Tolj has clearly set his stand: Politicians placed their focus on the question “Are we for golf or not?”, whereas the real question is “Are we for the City or not?!”
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, 2013, serie of 8/16 photographies, video, unique piece + 2 AP (engl.& croat.), each 69 x 91 cm
Slaven Tolj, To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, exhibition view, Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna 2014
Slaven Tolj, To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, exhibition view, Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna 2014
Slaven Tolj, To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, exhibition view, Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna 2014
Slaven Tolj, To My Three Z - Citius. Altius. Fortius, exhibition view, Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna 2014
ST | I love Zagreb
ST | I love Zagreb
I Love Zagreb, 2008, 5 photographies of the performance & Video, C-print, 3 + 2 AP, 30,5 x 45 cm
I love Zagreb was a reference to the performance Zagreb I love you by Tomislav Gotovac from
1971. Performed as part of a series of events entitled “Operation: City 2008” Tolj’s trigger for this
performance was the assassination of Ivo Pukanić, the owner of the newspaper Nacional – or, more
precisely, the security camera footage showing the suspect leaving the crime scene with his face hidden
behind a motorcycle helmet walking in the centre of Zagreb.http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/tolj_ilovezagreb1_450.jpg
I Love Zagreb, 2008, 5 photographies of the performance & Video, C-print, 3 + 2 AP, 30,5 x 45 cm
“I paraphrased the title of Gotovac’s performance and the place of the action – Zagreb city centre. While Gotovac walked naked and lay down on the asphalt of Zagreb highstreet Ilica thus “making love” to the city, I walked the city centre completely masked and covered. This way I emphasized different contexts of these two performances, the difference between the conditions of these two actions; the differences between the social and cultural environments of time they were created; the differences in the meaning of art then and now”.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/tolj_ilovezagreb2_450.jpg
I Love Zagreb, 2008, 5 photographies of the performance & Video, C-print, 3 + 2 AP, 30,5 x 45 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/tolj_ilove zagreb3_450.jpg
I Love Zagreb, 2008, 5 photographies of the performance & Video, C-print, 3 + 2 AP, 30,5 x 45 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/Tolj_ilovezagreb4_450.jpg
I Love Zagreb, 2008, 5 photographies of the performance & Video, C-print, 3 + 2 AP, 30,5 x 45 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/Tolj_ilovezagreb5_450.jpg
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/tolj_ilovezagreb_videostill_450.jpg
ST | Line
ST | LINE
Linija (Performance 2003), 2011, series of 5 photographies, documentation of the light installation in Dubrovnik 2003, unique print + 2 AP, 80 x 60 cm / 36 x 26 cm
In Line, 8th February 2003, an intervention into the city's Disney-like festive illumination of the old harbor, Tolj added a single line of lights, decorating an area of the harbor that had recently collapsed into the sea. Revealing a part of the city expected to remain hidden, his action was intended to undercut the escapist idyll. In an untitled documented performance, Tolj used the same material, a cable of 39 lights, corresponding to his age, which he wrapped around his body. Unwinding the cable, he extinguished the bulbs one by one as they burned his skin, so that in the end he remained in darkness and silence. The artist describes the action as a reversal of the narrative of his life, exploring ideas of disappearance and suicide while also ridding himself of the restrictions of the closed circle of the festively illuminated walls of the city.
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/tolj_linija2_450px.jpg
Linija (Performance 2003), 2011, series of 5 photographies, documentation of the light installation in Dubrovnik 2003, unique print + 2 AP, 80 x 60 cm / 36 x 26 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/linija 2_450px.jpg
Linija (Performance 2003), 2011, series of 5 photographies, documentation of the light installation in Dubrovnik 2003, unique print + 2 AP, 80 x 60 cm / 36 x 26 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/tolj_linija3450px.jpg
Linija (Performance 2003), 2011, series of 5 photographies, documentation of the light installation in Dubrovnik 2003, unique print + 2 AP, 80 x 60 cm / 36 x 26 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/slaven2_linija_450px.jpg
Linija (Performance 2003), 2011, series of 5 photographies, documentation of the light installation in Dubrovnik 2003, unique print + 2 AP, 80 x 60 cm / 36 x 26 cm
http://www.galerie-stock.net/images/slaven_tolj/pictures/slaven450px/linija_450px.jpg