Mladen Stilinović

Who is Mladen Stilinović?

Mladen Stilinović is a conceptual artist and one of the leading figures of the so-called "New Art Practice" in Croatia. He lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia.

Stilinović's works are based on the idea of social and art critique. They are often witty, and come with a dose of irony and cynicism illustrated for example in his work, Money is Money, Art is Art. He was one of the founding members of the informal neo-avantgarde, Grupa šestorice autora, together with Vladimir Martek, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović and Fedomir Vučemilović. The group was active in Zagreb from 1975 to 1979. In addition to his artistic creative output, he also managed the Extended Media Gallery, and was one of the co-founders of the Podroom Gallery. From 1969 to 1976 he was dedicated to experimental film. He collaborated with the group IRWIN on the project Retroavangarde. He is especially famous for his Exploitation of the Dead series which has been exhibited at many shows, such as documenta in Kassel.

He has had many exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, among the more recent being: The Cynicism of the Poor, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, In Search of Balkania, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, 2002, Blood & Honey – Art in the Balkans and In the Gorges of the Balkans which was shown in the Kunsthalle Fridericianeum, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center and Van Abbemuseum. Igor Zabel, the renowned Slovenian curator, chose him as a guest artist at the 50th Venice Biennale where Stilinović exhibited his work Dictionary – Pain in which he used white colour to blank out many of the definitions of words in a dictionary replacing them with the word pain.