Jusuf Hadžifejzović: Shop of Emptiness

You are cordially invited to attend the opening of the exhibition on Friday, 2 February at 7 pm at the Gallery of Contemporary Art.

"When Robert Rauschenberg exhibited his blank canvases, Barnett Newman remarked to him that he should have achieved that through colour. Hadžifejzović is aware that leaving a space empty is not enough to evoke emptiness. He is interested in emptiness within borders, he is interested in forms of emptiness. These are never just forms, but always bearers of a wide variety of content, often very personal, often also very political." -- Miklavž Komelj

Jusuf Hadžifejzović – one of the most renowned Bosnian-Herzegovinian artists and one of the most provocative artists of the middle generation from the Balkans – has put on show his new artistic oeuvre, which he created on his residency in Celje. He has continuously maintained his practice of pursuing, collecting and selling emptiness, extending and expanding it thoughtfully into a new space. The fact that he created nearly all of his works during the residence, brought them here to finish, or combined them with the products that had recently accompanied him on his way, is no coincidence. This is part of the art concept that merges with the artist's life practice.

With a kind of Beuys-like legacy from the Düsseldorf Academy, Hadžifejzović set off on a long artistic journey and is walking along those margins that consider art through a new life of seemingly dead objects or already known historical concepts. Persistently, with an almost incomprehensible verve, the artist collects either art objects or objects from everyday life, searches for new value systems in them, and bestows the status of a work of art upon them. As ready-mades and assemblages, he transforms them into art and gallery presentations, which the artist calls "depotgraphy". The term in the artist's case means writing with objects liberated from depots, either someone else's or his own. The "depotgraphically" arranged items, artworks and art objects create a museum of interpreted emptinesses. The artist's series appear as the series of his recent personal chronicles on the one hand, and remind us of a historical overview of the artistic, conceptual and other visual practices within contemporary art, on the other. Further on from Hadžifejzović's performative auctions with signed packaging, the artist's art "depot-bio-graphy" is on sale at the Celje exhibition, which constructs new meanings to "words" (objects or phenomena) following the language system, and writes memories of the personal contemplation of emptiness.

Jusuf Hadžifejzović was born in 1956 in Prijepolje, Yugoslavia. He studied at the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Professor Stojan Čelić and completed his postgraduate studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the supervision of Professor Klaus Rinke. His art practice includes painting, performance, installation and "depotgraphy". He has exhibited in many international exhibitions, from Berlin to South Korea, and has presented himself at the Venice Biennale few times. He lives and works in Antwerp and Sarajevo, where he leads the Charlama Depot Gallery.
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Curator: Maja Antončič

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue (76 pages, designed by Gaja Mežnarič Osole, translated from the Slovene by Arven Šakti Kralj Szomi, with texts by Maja Antončič and Miklavž Komelj).

The exhibition and catalogue were supported by Mestna občina Celje.