Mladen Stilinović
Krumpira
2005
EB66
4-color offset print
70 x 100 cm
Edition of 100, signed and numbered
Edition A: 55 copies (numbered 1/55 - 55/55, all in portfolios)
Edition B: 35 copies (numbered I/XXXV - XXXV/XXXV)
10 Artists Proofs (numbered AP 1/10 - AP 10/10)
400 Euro (Edition B)
Mladen Stilinović shows two photographic views of an action without an audience, which also resulted in a video (Potatoes, Poratoes (Krumpira, Krumpira), 2001). On the left, the artist can be seen crouching frontally in a snowy landscape. A few pieces of vanilla cake cut into squares are arranged in front of him on a cardboard platform – as if he were offering them for sale in the middle of the wilderness. But instead of cakes, the supposed seller is offering potatoes – “Krumpira”, the Croatian word for potatoes, is written below the images in various spellings and languages (Croatian, English, German). The photograph on the right shows the artist in the same situation but facing away from a heap of potatoes. With biting irony, Stilinović alludes here, as in other works (such as Geometry of Cakes, 1993), to the cynical saying attributed to Marie-Antoinette that the people should eat cake if they have no bread. But the artist as manufacturer and seller of “useless” goods is also self-deprecatingly addressed in this contribution to the graphic portfolio Love It or Leave It (EB66).
Text: Eva Scharrer