IgorAntić–UncompletedForm#7
Igor Antic's artistic practice is based on in-situ installations in which the artist analysis different relationships between art, places and situations, through the creation of original installations. The term in situ (on the site) refers to the place, but also to the situation.
The Uncompleted Forms project that Igor Antić started in 2018 consists of the creation of various artificial plants. These plants) have written questions on their branches, leaves or flowers (depending on the appearance of the plant and the circumstances) regarding the theme that the artist recognised as important and decided to problematise in his work. The artist envisioned that these plants would grow and develop over time, together with new questions.
The Uncompleted Form # 7, designed for the City Gallery in Kotor consists of two complementary parts: the first part consists of placing and photographing twenty-seven different colourful artificial flowers on which the artist has written questions regarding the relationship between the artwork and the audience in carefully selected mise en scène. The material product of this stage is 27 photographs presented as a polyptych on the wall of smaller gallery entrance hall. The other part consists of the physical presence of these same 27 flowers in the gallery large hall, which the artist sets in stylized "pots". The basic shape of both flowers and flowerpots are the same, minimalistically designed - the six equal-sided pentagons when unfolded form the flowers and when folded take the shape of the pots.
By posing a series of direct questions, Antić questions the relationship and the interplay between the audience and the artwork - he points to the inquiring role of art, the importance of confronting the known and unknown, the purpose of the existence of the audience in the revival of the artwork ... The artist does not give us answers but offers us a way to consider the circumstances in which we find ourselves from several different, sometimes unexpected angles. Indicating the situation in which both the artwork and the observer are in, one across the other, Antić expands our perception of both art and ourselves, as the audience.
Although Igor Antić's project Uncompleted Form # 7 was designed to constantly evolve and never to be finished, it represents an integral conceptual and contextual artwork - conceptual because the carrier of his work is the idea of problematizing the relationship "artwork - the audience," and not only the physical characteristics of the work; contextual, because it represents an engaged artistic intervention in a given situation and space, i.e. in a precisely defined context of place and time.
Ivona Fregl