There’s a quote that comes to mind when looking at this work by Igor Eskinja, an artist from Croatia: "Modern Art = I could do that + Yeah, but you didn't."
Modernism, as an art movement, originated in the early 20th century in tandem with momentous changes in politics, economics, and science. The developments in art and culture were a way of exploring new possibilities of expression, especially abstraction, in a rapidly changing world.
This work, titled Liberare Le Menti Occupare Gli Spazi is made from cheap packing tape and is applied directly to the wall of the gallery. Echoing the fleeting, fast-moving quality of the modern world, Eskinja creates his art using ephemeral materials applied directly to gallery surfaces.
This work is destroyed after each exhibit and the artist himself often doesn’t even create the art but sends measurements and instructions for the curators to do the installation themselves.
I often find myself shaking my head when walking into a gallery with a show like this and asking myself who it was that decided packing tape, tape gun still attached, on the wall was art.
I could do that… a small child could do that!
But I guess what it comes down to is that fact that I didn’t do it, Igor Eskinja did, and somebody, somewhere thought that it mattered.
