Mladen Bizumic (b.1976) studied fine arts at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts and Art Theory and Culture Studies (with Prof. Diedrich Diederchsen) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He has presented his work at 10th Istanbul Biennial; 9th Lyon Biennale; MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; Zacheta National Museum, Warsaw; Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris; CAC, Vilnius; Auckland Art Gallery; Te Papa - Museum of New Zealand, Wellington etc.. His work is represented by Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna and Frank Elbaz Galerie, Paris.
Read MoreBy working in various media, Bizumic makes installations that appear like sites or scenes that await event of their occurrence. Bizumic sets up arrangements that are always 'works' plus their x value. The x value stands for a number of contextual factors that constitute any exhibition (location, architecture, exhibition duration, institution etc.). There is a constant tension between the works and their display, the content and the context. Bizumic's practice is not about choosing one or the other but about the permanent, precise and playful change of attention values. This fills space with time, opens up potentialities and creates new points of perception.
For example, in his project for Freud Museum (for Her) in Vienna, Bizumic instals a vitrine of architectural fragments from Viennese buildings and paints them in the colour of their own shadows. These are accompanied by two commissioned works: a piano piece composed by his Vienna-born wife and a ‘psychoanalytic poem’ written by his mother, a psychologist. Local material including the built environment of Vienna, finds its way into a museum, reframed as a self-consciously ‘historical’ display, which, in turn, it is translated and abstracted in both highly structured and oddly subjective ways. For which is the musical note that figures the sound of a built form? What is the ‘unconscious’ of rubble that can be put into a poem?
