Petra Vidović
Zamatanja

For the exhibition Zamatanja, artist Silvio Vujičić creates a kind of remake of previously exhibited works in smaller dimensions. By reducing the works, he makes them even more clearly into objects of desire – fetishes. Vujičić is recognized for his artistic works with textiles or print, for his provocation of norms and expectations; he engages with disappearance, decay, and death.

The exhibition was first presented at Gallery 90–60–90 in Zagreb in 2017, within a cycle of exhibitions dedicated to the theme of Uniform. This is the first time that Vujičić presents himself with a solo exhibition in Dubrovnik.

The selected works distance themselves from the standardized and protected notion that the uniform creates; they derive their power from individualized and considered elaboration, transforming items of everyday men’s clothing into sculptures. The works are parts of men’s clothing – uniforms – stripped of their original function: to clothe and to protect. The textiles are pierced, left to rust, etched with acid, crystallized with salt, suffocated and embalmed in paraffin, “tanned” and dyed with cardinal red.
Into them, a story has been inscribed.

The foundation of all the works is cotton, Vujičić’s signature material. Cotton is woven in the form of poplin, damask, or twill covered with paper. Even when he reaches for the old Japanese technique of burnout printing, originally used on silk – where acid corrodes protein fibers – Vujičić prefers to use cotton fabric, treating it so that the plant-based fibers are eaten away.

Uniforms, in our consciousness, represent standardized, practical clothing specific to a certain group of people who wear them. In the 16th century, armies began to appear wearing uniforms in the same colors, and in the 17th century armor disappeared entirely, creating the need for designed, coordinated outfits for soldiers – which would gradually evolve into the typical male garments of today. What we find in Vujičić’s work is not uniformity, but key male clothing elements treated as fetishes. These include shirts, suits, Renaissance collars, codpieces.  The works communicate on several levels: they glow in the dark in one setting like a temple, their reduced size invites us to come closer, their finish is unusually refined.

On another level, when we realize how they were created and by what means the surfaces were treated, we understand that this clothing is not intended for people: it carries melancholy, grief (the work There’s a place around the corner where your dead friends live), aggression, transience (E.A. 1/1 S.V. Menswear Store #1), while at the same time captivating us with its aesthetic.

The introduction to the exhibition is the motif of the codpiece. In the absence of an appropriate Croatian equivalent, we will call it armor for male genitals (terms such as nakitnjak or nakurnjak – with slightly different functions and ethnographic origins – are not considered adequate translations; Eng. codpiece, Fr. braguette, Ger. schamkapsel).
It is a typical garment of the 15th and 16th centuries, originating from the shortening of medieval gowns and the need to cover the strategic part that joins two leggings.
We encounter it as a frequent motif in Renaissance painting, a detail which Vujičić also uses in screen printing as a leitmotif of the entire exhibition. Originally only a triangular fabric flap, it reached its peak in the Renaissance when it gained a firmer shape, stuffed with straw and horsehair. As needed, it was made of metal – as part of armor (Schamkapsel) – or leather, and at the same time served as a kind of pocket or compartment, naturally also a symbol of competition and a display of size and power.

According to costume historian Gundula Wolter, the armor for male genitals, the German Schamkapsel, represents constant sexual readiness, male self-assertion, as well as a surrogate for unfulfilled adventure. She presents these sharp remarks in her book Die Verpackung des männlichen Geschlechts: Eine illustrierte Kulturgeschichte der Hose, which traces the beginnings and cultural history of trousers – that fundamental and today unquestioned element of male clothing. Clothing in the Renaissance – let us recall the ordinances and prohibitions relating to dress in Renaissance Dubrovnik and Venice – signified class affiliation and was an important creator of identity.
The codpiecei is found in the English, Spanish, and French courts, as well as in South German versions of the Landsknecht hose, always with its specificities and strong connotations.
In addition to its role as a tailoring element (sometimes even shaped in a curve – as if erect) and fashion accessory, the codpiece has been variously interpreted: as a substitute for Henry VIII’s insufficient manhood, since he could not provide a male heir, or as a camouflage for bandages in the treatment of syphilis, which was spreading at the time.
By around 1590, the display of the prominent male member with the codpiece gradually disappeared, partly because Queen Elizabeth I (like the church) was horrified by this manifestation of male vanity – though not forever.
That strategic detail of 15th- and 16th-century men’s clothing has survived to this day, especially with pop, rock, and metal singers such as Michael Jackson and Till Lindemann, as well as in the costumes of popular characters from Star Wars, Batman, and others.
Vujičić selects the codpiece as the motif that anchors the exhibition.  It is the first of the key motifs of the male uniform that introduces us into Vujičić’s fetishized textile imaginary.

At the beginning of the exhibition we encounter two shirts, embalmed in paraffin, preserved for another time, another society, with the indicative title There’s a place around the corner where your dead friends live, borrowed from the lyrics of the band Einstürzende Neubauten.
In contrast to other processes directed against textiles, here we find an attempt to preserve them: a subtly illuminated garment immersed in paraffin that reveals its fine details and seams.
The milky light of this work allows us to immerse ourselves in silence, which no longer alludes to death and decay, as in the other works, but to memory.
Reduced to the size of a model, the installation E.A. 1/1 S.V. Menswear Store #1, presented in 2004 at VN Gallery, brings a sterile white collection of men’s clothing pierced with pins, over which water drips, creating rust that eats into the fabric. The clothing is unwearable, with a strong masochistic moment because it pricks. This is one of Vujičić’s first Gesamtkunstwerk pieces, announcing an author who conceives his work holistically, transforming VN Gallery into an unrecognizable space – a store where the visitor feels uncomfortable, confronted with unwearable garments, and at the same time disappointed if they had thought something might be purchased. Shock combined with both desire and repulsion are frequent mixed emotions provoked by these works.

The same is true of the unnamed work Untitled 3,4,5 – Shirt, consisting of cotton shirts covered with salt crystals after immersion in a supersaturated sodium chloride solution.
The corrosion of the fabric is slowed by placing it in a glass case. The force with which Vujičić initiates the processes of decay and erosion of his materials and objects is reflected in their artistic allure. The work Ruff – a print from the series of graphics of the male Elizabethan collar, a Renaissance garment remembered as one of the most expensive and prestigious fashion items in history. Meters upon meters of fine fabric and lace starched and often underpinned by wire structures into rich folds of the collar served as a significant status symbol in Renaissance Europe. It is remarkable that Vujičić presents this highly sculptural garment through a rarely used printmaking technique, allowing him to preserve the impression of lightness and refinement of finish.
The print is treated with the burnout technique, which erodes all fibers of organic origin, leaving behind only the delicate mesh structure of elastane on which the layers protected by color rest. In this work Vujičić’s interest in old and Far Eastern printing techniques comes to the fore, as well as his ever-present references to artists and motifs from the history of art and costume.

Finally, there is the artist’s self-portrait in a peculiar technique of stripping – the cut-out patterns of the artist’s body are displayed. The tanned skin is dyed with the most noble cardinal red obtained from female cochineal insects, fixed with silicone. This work serves as the key to reading the exhibition. Vujičić often works in monochrome; here the introduction of a meaning-charged red refers to the Romanian surname of his mother, Roşu (red), while the display of his own skin – compared to other garments – represents the zero degree of clothing. In this reduced scale, it is at once a literally pierced fetish doll.