acb Attachment is proud to present Mladen Miljanović’s newest body of works developed in the course of the last two years, nourished by the troubled times we currently live in, and primarily focusing on the social, political or cultural media representations of death. Through the lens of our media-saturated world, the artist examines how the pandemic situation has re-shaped our visual reality and the way we have been communicating about death in the form of mere numbers, data, charts and statistics.

At first glance, the objects displayed on pedestals evoke contemporary media and communication devices we use every day – computers, mobile phones, tablets, digital TV screens. These items are, however, deceiving. Made of black stone and engraved by hand to resemble the real ones to perfection in all details, they also clearly reference the aesthetics of tombstones, and therefore stand as silent, motionless and cold forms of eternal remembrance.

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Mladen Miljanović (1981, Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a member of the middle generation of artists who define the regional art scene through international and regional activities. His artistic practice is based upon a conceptual approach which questions its own surrounding and living conditions. His work is influenced by the experience of growing up during the war and its aftermath in a destroyed, impoverished, ethnically and territorially divided and isolated country as well as by the formal education he received in the Reserve Officer Military School, and his work at the tombstones workshop. The consequences of the war and the knowledge gained in the military school all make for the basic field of reference in his practice. Building on the knowledge he acquired as a student of painting, he has been combining new media and conceptual strategies into a pluralistic, engaged and often subversive contemporary approach in which art is not a goal, but a tool.

Mladen Miljanović participated in the 55th Venice Biennale, the 15th Busan Biennale and recently the 13th Cairo Biennale, in addition to other group shows. His solo projects have been exhibited at MUMOK – Vienna (2010); Gallery MC – New York (2012); acb Gallery – Budapest (2014-2017); A+A Gallery – Venice (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska, Banja Luka (2008); Neue Galerie, Graz (2007), to name just a few. He is the recipient of regional and international awards such as: “30th Nadežda Petrović Memorial Award” 2020, Čačak (Serbia); “White Aphroid Award” 2019, Maribor (Slovenia); “Henkel Art Award” 2009, Vienna (Austria); “Zvono” award 2007, SCCA Sarajevo (BiH).