ART CITIES:London-David Maljkovic

David Maljkovic is known for multifaceted exhibitions that investigate the erosion of memory and the corruption of information, revealing how ideas can be worn down by the effects of time and technology. For his second show IN London, Maljkovic presents a group of inkjet photo collages titled New “Reproduction”, as well as “Afterform”, a single slide projection, and a new version of the HD video “Out of Projection”, a title that the artist has used for a number of previous, related works.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Sprüth Magers Gallery Archive

The formal principle of collage is key to Maljkovic’s work, the artist has adopted this method as a way to respond to our defective memories, recombining photographs, films and projected images from his own personal archive. The artist has covered the main gallery walls with black-and-white, blown up installation photographs of his recent show at the Palais de Tokyo (21/10/14-11/1/15). The video “Out of Projection”, projected on the screen facing the entrance to the gallery, depicts retired engineers walking on a Peugeot test track in Sochaux, France. The overall texture of the moving image is dreamlike, yet also suggestive of a surveillance film, as the men and women walk in slow motion amongst futuristic cars, unaware that they are being filmed. This sense of dislocated time extends to the screen on the large wall, where “Afterform”, a single, unchanging slide, is projected. Maljkovic transformed a digital image of an earlier work into an analogue slide. This Afterform image is recapitulated again in the smaller gallery, this time enlarged and used as wallpaper. In “New Reproductions collages”, the Kodak color control patches and gray scale charts alongside the diverse photographic imagery present the possibility of external structures of measurement, even objectivity. Yet the torn and layered inkjets propose a deep, unending archaeology of imagery, where there can be no whole or true picture.

Info: David Maljkovic, Sprüth Magers Gallery, 7A Grafton Street, London, Duration: 10/4-9/5/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 10:00-18:00, www.spruethmagers.com