Paris 28/11/2009 Galerie Magda Danysz
A life size statue giving the three fingered Serbian salute on a pedestal strewn with empty beer cans, while on one wall words in blinking lights proclaimed “No one like me”, pictures from the artist’s friends with the words “My friends are better artists than yours” were scrawled on the wall and photographs of glamorous looking people were presented with the statement, “My friends are better looking than yours”.
This installation about the ego of the artist presenting himself as a hero in a statue made of gold and the large format paintings and laser cut sculpture are all part of Serbian/French artist Vuk Vidor’s second stage of his American Quartet series.
His using of quickly identifiable elements, like the American comic book style and pop art, to define a new situation on the world’s political and power landscape is like a sugarcoating for a bitter reality.
Like kryptonite makes Superman helpless and weak, so are politics today making our world fragile and vulnerable. Vidor’s super-heroes are pathetic and deflated, dejected by the very system they fight to protect. Their conversation bubbles show no words anymore only silence and Captain America is a resurrected Atlas, no longer able to carry the weight of the American dream…
