SWEET CONCEPTUAL ARTIST / SLATKA KONCEPTUALNA UMETNICA /
SÜßE KONZEPTKÜNSTLERIN
2017 / 2013 –
Process artwork / installation / platform /
Sweet Conceptual Artist / Süße Konzeptkünstlerin is a virtual artistic identity created in 2013 as a hybrid construction and a performative textual statement. It proceeded to act as an open dialogue platform and a collective identity, building its features and its artistic opus by interacting with observers/participants.
The project is focusing on the relation: art - anti-art - non-art - contemporary advertising, while questioning the position of artistic identities, status and position of artists in contemporary society, the boundaries/reach of artistic activity as well as the relationship between a work of art - artist - observer. Sweet Conceptual Artist explores the notion of authorship and originality, thus subverting the institutional system of art: she is both the artist and the critical subject, an engaged participatory project, a group identity, an advertising campaign and a brand.
Inspired by Joseph Beuys' ideas about social sculpture and his thesis on “art for all”, as well as the grotesque collectivism of the Situationist International, Sweet Conceptual Artist is consistently building on the tradition of anti-artistic interventions, using methods of appropriation and self-proclamation as well as auto-irony as her primary means of discourse. Seemingly parodying each of her new artistic appearances, she – as a mirror of events in (and beyond) the contemporary art scene– is emphasizing the contradictions on which she builds her entire opus.
Over the past years, Sweet Conceptual Artist, occasionally changing her (fictitious) national identities, realized her work through 9 phases which are interconnected, each of them beginning with a new public call for interpretation and interaction:
(1) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For a Job [Slatka Konceptualna Umetnica traži posao (2013)],
(2) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For Works of Art [Slatka Konceptualna Umetnica traži umetničke radove (2014/2015)],
(3) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For Support [Slatka Konceptualna Umetnica traži podršku (2016)],
(4) Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking For Understanding [Slatka Konceptualna Umetnica traži razumevanje (2016)],
(5) Become a Sweet Conceptual Artist / Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking for Videos [Werde Süße Konzeptkünstlerin / Süße Konzeptkünstlerin sucht Videos (2017)],
(6) Become a Sweet Conceptual Artist / Sweet Conceptual Artist Looking for Support [Werde Süße Konzeptkünstlerin / Süße Konzeptkünstlerin sucht Unterstützung (2017)],
(7) Sweet Conceptual Artist looking for texts (SCA website)
(8) Sweet Conceptual Artist Offers a Solution / Become a Sweet Conceptual Artist [Slatka Konceptualna Umetnica nudi rešenje / Budi i ti Slatka Konceptualna Umetnica (2018)]
(9) Sweet Split Conceptual Artist Offers a Solution Pink Peristyle Cotton Candy For Your Family Banana Split [Slatka Splitska Konceptualka nudi rješenje_Ružičasti Peristil Bombon od Pamuka za Vašu Obitelj Banana Split (2021)]
On March 22, 2017, with a ceremonial inauguration at the Kulturdrogerie art space in Vienna, Sweet Conceptual Artist was promoted into the newborn Austrian artist Süße Konzeptkünstlerin.
In the latest, Split (Croatian) phase, Slatka Splitska Konceptualka (Sweet Split Conceptual Artist) is trying to present herself not only as an active participant in the Split scene, but also to take on the role of leader, advisor and healer with her usual methods of self-proclamation. After a period of isolation, which at the same time caused the double postponement of her exhibition in Split, the Sweet Split Conceptual Artist’s idea about possible solutions was also transformed. In its new phase, it’s showing an extremely escapist approach, combining meditative practices and glitch aesthetics of social media, this time excluding the two-way interaction and participation.
Her idea of Pink Sugar Wool Peristyle (cotton candy) as a possible solution is accompanied by an extremely simplified ephemeral collage that mimics the Instagram story aesthetics, offering instant realization and consumption of the proposed idea. The critical treatment of Peristyle as an indisputable symbol (of the Split conceptual scene, of massive tourism in Split, of an uninterrupted source of artistic inspiration) is manifested this time through its overemphasized banalization, which implies self-banalization of the author's intervention.
In other words, Sweet Split Conceptual Artist is becoming a paradise for gourmands, pointing out that ritual-meditative candy therapy could be the ultimate solution in times of crisis.