The exhibition I Feel Like Contemporary Art Is Over brings a fresh interdisciplinarity to the Zine Vitrine gallery cycle, transcending the sphere of the established, harmless, somewhat classical, or benign (largely non-existent?) discourse on contemporary art with its self-criticism, cynicism, and sincerity.
The author presented this time is not an artist; his zine is not artistic, but rather a literary-confessional and critical work; it resolutely covers the field of cultural labour that typically supports the sphere of visual art. The author is primarily an art critic and curator; he does not produce art, but rather thinks about it, writes about it, canonises it, observes it, and perhaps even understands it. In his work, he questions the status of contemporary art and the people involved in it. The bulk of the present essay does not revolve around specific artists, important galleries, or disastrous exhibitions, nor does it resort to praising his own CV or reciting potentially relevant references. Instead, the text addresses – in the first person and very critically – current working conditions in culture and the socio-political foundations within that same sector, which favour privileged individuals, deepen unsustainable precariousness, and generally liquidate any pre-existing sympathy for the art scene.
The zine was created during the author’s residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. It acts in equal measure as a diary, a travelogue, and a critical essay, intertwining impressions of the art scenes in Belgrade and Paris, a critique of gallery institutions and the educational system, and the personal experience of a precarious worker. Added value is provided by honest admissions and bitter confessions regarding an exponential, involuntary immersion into loneliness, irony, resentment, and shallowness. Drawing on popular culture on one hand and art history on the other, the author also employs references to the Venice Biennale, Tumblr, the painter Henri Matisse, Balenciaga, the essayist Clement Greenberg, French windows, paracetamol, the series Sex and the City, the Centre Pompidou, and the video game Zelda. The essay within the zine is presented in Serbian and English; it was published under the auspices of the Varikina publishing studio and printed at the Matrijaršija autonomous cultural centre in Belgrade using the risograph technique on 80-gram pink paper.
Lav Mrenović is an independent art writer and curator based in Belgrade. With an education in art history, his main interests revolve around the topics of the globalization of contemporary art, structural inequalities in the art world, and post-internet art. For years, he has been active in the local independent scene, mainly as an editor of magazines and exhibition catalogues, a writer for online media, a curator of group and solo shows, and an activist in art workers’ initiatives. Recently, he has focused on expanded forms of art writing, blending with fiction, essay, and the colloquial language of social media. Currently, he is thinking about the future of art production and interpretation beyond ossified institutional frameworks.
Curated by: Maša Žekš
Free admission.
7. 4.–30. 4. 2026
Organisation: DobraVaga / Kino Šiška
