...There is the story of how Aleksander Gojkovic and Milos Lubardo filled out the former’s little storefront gallery on rue de Turrene through the simple use of signposts and arrows in the maze of the Marais, directing the artworld hordes into the little space and there bombarding them with a stream of words, the infamous press release that was a love letter to Catherine Millet, artist’s statements, reviews, art works themselves strong and sure and shouting back at the viewers in front of them, glass of Campari in one hand, and the latest manifesto of the collective LGB in the other. The signs stayed up for weeks, and people never stopped calling around for a chat and a look at the art. The Balkans, as they say, had landed.
This was 2003; the apogee. It seems like a very long time ago, not only for Djordje Bojić and Company, but for all of us. The neo-neo Dadists had pulled off a clean, surgical invasion and we were all entralled. Bojić, the head curator and chief disseminator had used his cohorts’ talent well: he used the mechanism of the vernissage and the use of language meshed together to ensare the Paris artworld into the new centre of LGB activity. Branko Savić’s paintings appeared like a frenetic revelation of an art practice long forgotten; Elaine Pettifer, not seen in Paris for almost a decade, brought critics to tears with her poingnant, yet bombastic clothe tapestries; Michael Nagry appropriated the best of the last century with the gumption of a man who felt he was owed a debt. The whole group were producing art as if they were recouping what was their right, with an intenisty that recalled the old avantgardes (without the nostalgia) and a brashness and naivety that recalled the best years of the YBAs.Trying to define the art of LGB, or accounting for the concentrated success of their artistic output and conquering of the European artworld from 1994-2004 is not an easy task. Indeed any holistic approach to this amorphous, shape shifting group of Balkan and Mitteleuropean artists should admit defeat before it begins: after all words have their own power and their distortion, prostitution and exploitation have always been one of the strong arms of LGB...
words: Petter Beardsley, Relate Art Magazine, Spring Issue 2007