Have you noticed the gigantic photo on the facade of our building?

Braco Dimitrijević, Casual Passer-by I met at 12.27 PM, 2016, Inkjet print, 456 x 240 cm., Photo: Uğur Ataç

Have you noticed the gigantic photo on our façade? Our Cold Front from the Balkans exhibition focuses on different generations of artists and art groups from the Balkan region. Throughout the exhibition, we keep sharing detailed information about the artworks. Here’s detailed information about the artist Braco Dimitrijević’s and his artwork “Casual Passer-by I met at 12.27 PM”.

Braco Dimitrijević is a seminal artist of conceptual art who gained international reputation in the seventies with his Casual passer-by series, in which gigantic photo portraits of anonymous people were displayed on prominent facades and billboards in European and American cities. Dimitrijević also mimicked other ways of glorifying important persons by building monuments to passers-by and installing memorial plaques in honour of anonymous citizens.

In the mid-seventies he started incorporating in his installations original master paintings borrowed from a museum collection. The Triptychos Post Historicus realized in numerous museums around the world unite in a harmonious synthesis high art, everyday objects and fruit. The artist’s statement “Louvre is my studio, street is my museum” expresses both the dialectical and transgressive nature of his oeuvre.

Braco Dimitrijević’s work as well as his theoretical book Tractatus Post Historicus (1976) were an important influence on two tendencies that dominate artistic discourse today: critical practices in public space and interventions in museum collections.

Written by Cornelia Lauf