Agirlinhongkong publishes a long chat with contemporary artist Gligorov. She’d buy it all. And feels like the Diver in Elena’s house.


HOW DID YOU BECOME AN ARTIST AND IF YOU WEREN’T AN ARTIST WHAT WOULD YOU BE? 

Robert Gligorov: I’ve always been attracted of drawing, I’ve always drawn since I was young and this is an exercise which has accompanied me since ever, so I’ve applied drawing in many different commercial fields like comics, illustrations, publicity…and other…art arrived at the age of 36 after having inquired many possibilities of creativity…it was an encounter of pre-established fate. If I had never drawn and if I hadn’t been interested in the plastic arts I would surely have become a surgeon or a coach.

 

MANY PEOPLE ACCUSE CONTEMPORARY ART OF HAVING AN INTIMATE RELASHIONSHIP WITH MARKETING, WHAT IS YOUR PERCEPTION?

Robert Gligorov: Art is everywhere. Advertising, cinema, fashion, design are obtained by the artists without paying a copyright and art becomes unavoidable more aggressive to motivate its existence and visibility in the contemporary world. You can’t speak about marketing in the artistic creativity but you can speak about marketing in the constructive process in making a work becoming a “cult”, so it’s the collector, the various structures which protect the work and of course the value on the auctions…it’s not important if the same owners of the works sanction the value. This is pure marketing, especially if you have an aggressive project to give value to the works of living contemporary artists…so more value the work has more beautiful it is…but this contradicts the philosophical concept of making art. If there is marketing it’s one of the aspects of the “dome” or of the “lobby” who want to have the control of the market. 

DO YOU THINK YOUR ART HAS A SOCIAL ACTIVE FUNCTION? AND HOW EXACTLY?

Robert Gligorov: Of necessity the sources of inspiration are from the social, from the media and from everything which one gets in contact to; nature, the personal life, traumas, love…negative and positive experiences…so I don’t even dare to imagine that my art has a social function. The artist can’t be a sentimental, but has a cynical vision of the reality and this puts him above the “politically correct” and the provocation can trigger a mechanism of dialog or of breakdown. But the world is so various, cultures so different.. this attempt to democratize and conform the planet is a huge venture…and one will see the results at a later time. The artist can not any longer speak to his backyard, the bourgeois audience of his environment…because that should be a drop in the sea. So what does one mean with social? Nowadays it’s more than ever a concept which is difficult to define.      

WHO ARE YOUR FAVOURITE ARTISTS?

Robert Gligorov: Matisse, De Kooning, Guston, Morandi.. contemporaries M. Barney, Prince, Neo Rauch.. and many more.

WHAT LEFT YOU THE STRONGEST VISUAL MEMORIES? BOOKS? MOVIES? YOUR HOME COUNTRY?

Robert Gligorov: Magazines…anymagazine… I adore the newsstands.

IF YOU WERETO RECOMMEND 1 BOOK 1 MUSEUM AND 1 MOVIE ONLY – WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

Robert Gligorov: The nude monkey (Morris) , Pompidou , Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese) 

 

IF YOU WERE GIVEN UNLIMITED FUNDS WHICH PROJECT WOULD YOU WORK ON?

Robert Gligorov: Surely donating is a great joy and the astonishment of the faces of the people who receive a present isinvaluable, so I would always be on tour making donations to the most desperate cases..

 

Angels and devils, 2.20m high real books about criminals (black ones) and poets and artists biographies (red cross)

ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT THE DIRECTION THE WORLD IS TAKING?

Robert Gligorov: When I was a boy one talked a lot about the future, in the science fictions films…well the future has arrived.. certain technologies live with us.. and about this “wow!!”.. no, I’m not worried, on the contrary I’m very confident in a peaceful future…the only thing which sometimes astonishes me is how much the most part of the world is “back”, like we were in a film in costume…I take cognizance of this only since a few years…if you think that Bush didn’t even know where Afghanistan was located, beh, he’s not the only one…the world and the human being will survive with a new technology and a new attention for the environment and the social injustice. Actually I feel that there isn’t any longer a desire of control but one wants the quality of life. This cleaning process is still in action…before the women in Afghanistan will have rights to study and to the vote there will pass several decades…and so on….but it’s an unstoppable process of civilization.  

DO CRITICS/JOURNALISTS EVER TELL YOU SOMETHING NEW ABOUT YOUR WORK/ DISCOVER ASPECTS OF YOUR WORK YOU HADN’T IN MIND?

Robert Gligorov: No, I have always been misunderstood, incredible, I feel myself pure like crystal and I often hear things that do not belong to me, but you know, to explain ones work is maybe the most difficult thing when makingart.. however the critics opinion can affect your self-image…or your inferiority complex if you’re not accepted.

YOU USE YOUR BODY A LOT – WHAT ABOUT THE SPECTATOR’S BODY – IF ANYTHING COULD BE DONE HOW WOULD YOU PHISICALLY DRAG THE VIEWER INTO YOUR WORK?

Robert Gligorov: It’s a problem that I don’t assume because I’m the first observer, if I should assume the problem of the observer I would probably do a commercial operation, of marketing… but this is not my method. I do and I exhibit and then you can decide.

The diver in Elena’s house

 

 

IF YOU COULD SHOW YOUR WORK TO A PASSED AWAY ARTIST, WHOSE OPINION WOULD YOU ASK?

Robert Gligorov: I think that artists of the past are appreciable for the time in which they lived and for what they managed to do with their own means but today the modern contemporaries are much stronger to me. Of course, more than an opinion regarding my job it would be interesting to see the astonishment in seeing what their works have become…the Mona Lisa, the paintings of poor Van Gogh. I’d like to bring them thenews that they are dead but they are more alive than ever in the middle of us and they are the true immortal. Then I would like to shock them with our new way of speaking, do you imagine showing Michelangelo my video “The legend of Bobe” in motion?.. he could faint by the shock. 

CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS YOU DO NOT LIKE:

Robert Gligorov: Look, politically you should never say names…but I have a suffer which is more than the “presenzialism” of certain artists (like Abramovic… she’s everywhere… it’s like a virus) and the system which has been created around the artists which is very irritating, there are artists who just not to miss the gallery, curators…prefer not to operate.. but this is incredible…a true artist work in whichever condition, in whichever context, if a work is strong it is strong everywhere.

CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS YOU LIKE:

Robert Gligorov: Baselitz , Peyton , Feliz Gonzales Torres , Luc Tuymans , Gino De Dominicis … all those artists for who their life and their work are one only thing…they don’t consider art being a work.. I adore however also the stupid art, the weak conceptual, the copycats, the sly ones…everything which is suggested has a why, and for many it can be even a dream becoming famous and live like a star… have a great job…

 

WRITERS WHO HELPEDYOU UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORANEITY:

Robert Gligorov: I’ve read many treaties of writers who speak about art but only few have convinced me, because they’re not artists, they are actually writers, of course if inside your work there are quotations by cultured writers then it has a major meaning, for example Umberto Eco has written a book about beauty, but it’s an obvious book, taken for granted, it wasn’t illuminating, I rather find that young artists are illuminated, of their vision of contemporary art… “that sometimes something has clicked“ and the reading of art you can’t teach. You can develop a language, many curators know that certain works are right, but they don’t know why, they are curators but not art critics.

Wherever i lay my pool that’s my home. Real vertical swimming pool , with real tails.

 

DO YOU THINK WE ARE LIVING IN THE SOCIETY DEBORD DESCRIBED?

Robert Gligorov: No, I don’t think so, all the hypothesis and expectations, sociologists and analysts, they have only partly become true… I believe that nobody has foreseen specific scenes like the 11th of September, like the net, “catastrophismes” like Orwell,Marshall Mc Luan, Adorno… partly they live in our society but conforming the human being in a passive spectator can be a sweet decline towards the uselessness of our existences… therefore a position of convenience…but it’s just a grotesque parody of the human being.

WHAT IS PORNOGRAPHY FOR YOU? AND WHAT IS TELEVISION?

Robert Gligorov: The pornography was surely a strong social comfort and when a society liberalizes the pornography means that it is a free country. A very important aspect is that it has a pedagogical thread in its purely recreational content. It has specialized during the last years and like all consumption things their pleasure, sense, can lead to compulsiveness.. but this is valid also for other drugs and anyhow I believe that it’ll vanish.. because the market will vanish.. for the facility to have access to pornographic material and thetelevision is the evolution of the picture and has still many potential to evolve into something else and its destiny like the computer is to live with humanity but not to bewilder it.     

IS THERE A QUESTION YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE ASKED – BUT NO ONE EVER DID?

Robert Gligorov: Are you afraid of death?

Divina

 

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON AND WHERE CAN WE SEE AND BUY YOUR WORK?

 

Robert Gligorov: When I work I realize many stupid things, sometimes I loose whole days working on certain ideas and projects.. then when the moment to make the exhibition comes I do quite another thing.. incredible.. I have never prepared anything in advance. I’m very interested both of the installation and of the perception of the work and the environment.. as you can see it’s not much of social.

 

I’ve just finished the exhibition in Milan at the Pac Museum and I’m not in a hurry to plunge into anotherpsycho physical stress within short. You can buy my works at the Galleria Pack in Milan, AeroplasticBrussels or Pascal Vanhoecke Paris.. or Michela Rizzo Venice.

 

Dollar note. Bird cage with real birds and 2 real vertical pianos – when birds jump on the aluminium straw they play piano notes.