Goran Djordjević has been active in the art scene from the mid seventies as one of the protagonists of the so-called “analytic line” of Belgrade conceptualism. In 1979, he has completely turned to copying projects, which he practices until 1985, when he stops producing authorial work in the field of art. Although many works of Djordjević’s copyist body of work were exhibited in independent and group exhibitions in the country and abroad, with few exceptions, they were not attracting attention of local critics, nor were they included in the art history reviews of the time.

The reasons for non-acceptance of this body of work are numerous and should be looked for in the preservation of the basic postulates of artistic practices and meaning of art. Production of copies of iconic originals of modern art, multiplication of worthless amateur paintings or painting copies of kitsch-reproductions cannot be easily explained within traditional parameters of artistic creativity connected to the ideas of originality, uniqueness, expressiveness and authorship. On the other hand, it was not possible to categorize Djordjević’s artistic gesture in a single trend specification from the late seventies and the beginning of the eighties with which the visual criticism of the time operated (e.g. new artistic practice, painting of new conception etc). From today’s perspective, it is clear that we are dealing with a project that moved along the line of thinking that can be compared to New York Copyist Appropriation Art that appeared simultaneously, and whose main protagonists were Sherrie Levine, Mike Bidlo, Richard Prince and others. Compared to this trend, Djordjević is autonomous in that he declared the copy “more significant that the original” and in that he understood copying as an “attitude against art” – an attitude that anarchically pushes the institution of art into absurdity, likewise including the speaking position of the “artist” himself that acts within the system of art. Djordjević’s copyism, in an emancipatory way, expanded the category of copy beyond all previously conquered borders and added it a power to “relate a different story” from the one that the original itself relates.

The exhibition “Against Art. Goran Djordjević: Copies 1979–1985” is a joint project of Goran Djordjević and the curatorial team that present the works of this body of work through two different exhibition formats: reconstruction and contemporary installation. In other words, the very installation of the exhibition has been conceived as a combination of the principle of reconstruction of original installations (i.e. the arrangement of objects) and the principle of contemporary installation that implies a change of concept and meaning, creating new arrangements and new relationships. The exhibition “Against Art. Goran Djordjević: Copies 1979–1985” is close to the logic of retrospective as a metatextual plain of “looking backwards”, analogous to retrospection that Djordjević’s works occupy compared to the narration of art.