ANDRAZ BEGUS
andraz.begus@gmail.com

The trash of artistry – the Metrobish station garbage can, Instalation

Artistic statement

Everything started with an idea of an art gallery in which an art exhibition (this one) was planned to happen. By applying the idea of an art gallery to a certain space we didn’t really change the practical aspect of the space in question but what changed was the understanding we previously had of that same space. It’s like if Europe suddenly became part of the USA. In the sense of physical reality the space would remain perfectly the same but what would change could be for example the law by which one could be suddenly sentence to death for committing certain crimes which could not be possible under the law of European countries.

The idea of an art gallery of course implies the idea of art and an artwork as well even if it exists as an empty space or even if it doesn’t exist at all. Talking about an art gallery is talking about art as well. And if nowhere else then art, an artwork has to at least exist inside an art gallery or inside the idea of one. If nothing else then just as an idea as well.

The first time I visited this place which at that time was already chosen to be used for this artistic exhibition I noticed there was a lot of garbage lying around. And without the garbage it would appear quite empty. And at that point there were two moments that one could reflect on standing inside what was understood as to become an art gallery:

• garbage lying around was the most easy thing to notice and the main thing taking space inside this place that was thought as an art gallery
• the same garbage was the most likely to be the most important thing to remove from that place before the exhibition would actually take place, because the plan was to show art and not a dirty space full of garbage.

Using the previous thinking one needs to conclude that removing the garbage which was the only thing that visibly existed inside the place which was supposed to be an art gallery would be like removing the last thing that could possibly be art from the last place where art could possible exist if it didn’t exist anywhere else – an art gallery.

Of course the easiest way to react in this situation would be to simply “recognize” the garbage lying there as art even more easily since it’s inside a space which was chosen to become an art gallery already. And then it may not be necessarily good art as it often happens but still art. Using the idea of a ready-made what once trash became art. But isn’t the idea of a ready-made something that we could understand as used and consumed which are attributes that we could apply to what we understand as garbage as well? We don’t discard new things as garbage but those that are used and consumed beyond their practical usability. And the idea of a ready-made was already used and consumed in 1917 in the form of an urinal that was artistically exposed as the Fountain. That means my idea was a used and already consumed one and as such it could be understood as “garbage” – artistic garbage. Because some art could possibly be “garbage” too, meaning that it could be of poor quality or not original.

And so I took the job of removing the garbage from the place in which the art exhibition was supposed to happen and gathering it up to build an artistic installation. What I had to do was to clean the space of this art gallery and prepare it for the exhibition. And by doing so I was in my speculation removing art from the art gallery so that it could be filled with “real” art. And the broom I was using to sweep the floor was like a paintbrush with which I was painting the canvas back to white so that it could be painted again. I imagined to be bringing contemporary art back to its beginning.

But what I recognized and established as art was actually considered garbage. Both by other artistic interventions that took place inside the same space and also by the understanding of space inside which this exhibition was set and which was thought as an art gallery. Actually through the whole artistic intervention the original meaning of what I was dealing with – garbage never really changed into anything else but remained just garbage. And so it had to be removed from the place in which the exhibition was about to happen as garbage and indeed it was just to allow art to take its place. In this way what obviously appeared as garbage before the artistic intervention became, remained garbage in an artistic way too. The principle of a ready-made which is to change the meaning of an object by removing it from its original context and placing it into a different one failed. What started as garbage from what was conceptualized to be a Metrobish underground station ended in becoming, remaining the Metrobish underground station garbage can which is something that is part of every civilized environment.