Vadim Fishkin, Don Quixote Pact/Alliance, 2010

Brought together under the title »No Magic«, the exhibition brings together older and more recent works by the artist working in his own particular postconceptual tradition, intertwined with developments in science and technology.

His works for the present exhibition are constructed on denying the public's expectations: instead of the illusion, being shown as reality, the public is offered its »exposé« with a precise description of the technology that creates the illusion. More precisely, the illusion created here by the artist thematizes its own illusory nature. In many works Fishkin ironizes the seemingly unconditional, but at the same time extremely fragile and relative, idea of the art institution’s lofty significance. In Fiškin’s work technology is given a narrative and allegoric power, and by underscoring its ineffectualness the artist foregrounds the senselessness of human aspirations and ambitions. Pointing to the subtle interconnectedness between reality and imagination, metaphysics and pragmatism, his artistic explorations wet our curiosity without revealing their meanings with any finality. Characteristically witty, Fiškin’s installations, sculptures, photographs, and drawings deal with such subjects as geography, time, light, aeronautics and meteorology. Fishkin’s turn to the world of play, his reduction of the artwork to the status of a play object, is in essence an assertion of the autonomous nature of art. Fishkin is not a political activist, but nor is he a cynical or tragic loner: his irony aims at a reconsideration of certain relationships; it does not seek to overturn or ignore them. It proposes a means of creative and moral existence within the system by creating meanings that the system can neither predict nor miscalculate. Through irony directed at the system Fishkin preserves the ideal of community and, by likening the artwork to a toy or marionette, preserves his faith in art. 

Most of the works have been produced by the DUM Association of Artists.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication including texts by Chris Sharp, Viktor Misiano and the exhibition’s curator, Igor Španjol.

The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. 

SODOBNA UMETNOST / CONTEMPORARY ART Emission, by Aljoša Abrahamsberg, July 2015