I was looking at windows and, as they are like glassed holes behind which there is something live happening, I had that kind of association. And then, I contemplated about the difference in what each eye sees, that little difference in angle… how that gives a complete image?... I could not understand… but then I thought of twins and how sometimes there are some differences between them. I looked for photographs of twin sisters, found photos, PhotoWOWs! Two of my nieces. And then I took an old brick from the old power plant near my house in Belgrade… and drilled and holed it, to fit the eyeglasses inside, with a large, thick lenses, I used to collect those passionately back then… And I inserted those two little photos… and I looked at it - and behold! A BRICK.

(1997)

On flea market I bought and old German book of logarithmic tables.
Yellowish paper, endless series of numbers… poetic booklet, everyone should have one.
At the same time, I bought a hand drill for modelists, hobbyists, like a pencil, with thin
drills. Those rows of numbers provoked me somehow… and I started drilling.
One after another, series of little holes, through all pages, holes that go through the whole
Book and out the back cover, sometimes even continuing through the table, through my finger…
The drill heated up and the old paper began to smell, like toasted bread.
And even more, like bread, like dough, the book started rising!
But I didn't know that each hole has its thickness, thin thickness
But hundreds and thousands of holes… and the book started breathing, pages to fall apart a little but the book still kept its shape and the light entered between those pages… ohhh!!!
So beautiful! I didn't expect that.

(1997)

There are those DIY handyman shops, shops that sell parts and materials of all kinds… there are also hardware stores in Prague, there they sell nails by kilos – "Sekan" nails, with different egg-shaped heads, simply irregular, not perfect shaped but something much better. Shoemakers use them, I don’t know why. I bought 300 grams of those nails and, I really don’t know why, I started sticking them in a soft bread from the bakery. So it keeps its shape but becomes armored with nails! Even after it dried out, the bread stayed in one piece until one day my friend Branja, a Slovak, came and started wondering what does that bread look like inside, he imagined what it could look like and dropped the bread from his hands and it broke into two pieces in the kitchen! And inside - nice, moldy… and rusted nails.

And maybe even before that, in the great Stromovka park, in Prague, I saw and touched tree stumps and dead, cut trees that were left to stick from the ground after a great flood. What year was that?
One stump was just high enough to lean on, to rest upon on your elbow.
I don’t have a clue how, but it came to me that it should be a table, like some knight table,
Armored like knight armors. So - nails!
I cycled to the park, to my stump, and started hammering. During the breaks I heard birds, I watched how some green bugs get our from under the bark and hide, some kid on skates falls down periodically,
when I look, already got up. Policemen and policewomen ride horses through that park, I watched them.
As time passed by, nails went from silver to bronze color but the stump is still standing firmly there.

(2004 - 2006)

Wandering through ethnographic museums... objects finely handcrafted using rough tools... I feel closeness to that, I easily get carried away and absorbed in thoughts... a comb made of thorns, thorns hollowed and then sewn... at the end I used superglue, without struggling with sew, but search for thorns was a real research. I never paid attention to that before. Thorns from honey locust (Akata), the tallest grow by the rails, on the steep embankments covered with white gravel, you have to flounder and you will definitely come home scratched but with a jar full of killer thorns.
With pliers or scissors I picked out hair from old brushes... those beardless plates with holes and handles were beautiful enough by themselves to look at and own, maybe I just ruined them with the thorns...?

(2006 - 2007)

I bought that shirt in a second hand shop, in a side street in Zemun. With a pedigree that it was owned by one of our diplomats who traveled the whole world and died, I liked it instantly. Shades of cream and sand colors, I imagined it was the casual uniform of the Foreign Legion.
And yet, interestingly, it really upset my father, he shouted angrily that I “dress like an old man, that I have disastrous taste , that is is terrible, destroy it, DESTROY IT!!!...”
Well fine, I can listen to him for once. And I liked the idea of destroying the shirt and I remembered how one morning, after the night out, my sister fell asleep with the last cigarette in hand and the cigarette burned the hole through the sheets.
Without a second thought, 2 years later, I started lighting cigarette after cigarette and melted holes all over that synthetic shirt.
The shirt smoked, I got dizzy and my hands smelled.
I don’t know if I should hole it all the way, I mean the collar and the sleeves, pocket covers…?

(2006 - 2007)

The theme of that group exhibition was “Collections.” I thought - should I brag with the pile of old photographs or diplomas and medals from various contests. Or with the series of mucky handkerchiefs that I kept for some reason, after a cold.
But to tell you the truth, watching me indecisive, my beautiful wife simply told me: “Why don’t you show your family collections, I’m sure everyone has something...”
So I chose my sister’s kingdom of erasers – colored, perfumed, Chinese... she even had in one box those well used, rounded, reduced pieces, covered in dirt from the lead pencils..mmm...all of them Milena collected in the elementary school, arranged around the room, maybe even nibbled them...

From my mother Desanka, of the many different trinkets she has, she has everything, I selected buttons and we sew them, spread them all over a black dress.

And around that dress, there should be something from my father, Miloje. He studied a serious science and has a serious job and I don’t know if he has time to be interested in collecting. But still... I was very happy to see, on the page margins of his journal books... his fantasies!
The letter “U” from Tuesday (Utorak) blooms into an unnecessary construction, from the framed date of a deadline, an imaginary machinery emerges, with springs, wheels, handles...
More often there are straight lines and geometric shapes but sometimes also some curvature... although, NEVER does the half-circle turn into the curvature of a female body, not that! But still, those were not sketches for actual projects he worked on, it was simply his outlet, an escape from the real world of machinery into... the imaginary world of machinery. Pure joy and poetry! He deserves a little monograph.

As for my own collections, at the end I chose thick eyeglasses, with a large diopter and thick glass, the kind I collect... on a whim, from pure weirdness, they pile and wait for me to make something out of them. I mostly buy them from a gypsy at the Kalenić market, he always has a special offer for me: thirty of the thickest pairs for my bike. But I would never want that!

(2004)

I got a 'sweatshirt' – I hate that word – with the Puma sign.
I didn’t intent to advertise an already successful company...

(2005)

I don’t want to pretend I’m some smart conceptualist, so this is how it went, simply put:
I was bathing, took my clothes off in front of the shower, and I left my shoes there.
And when I made a step to take a towel, I first stepped on a shoe, I don’t know why.
And then, from the pressure and my wet leg, the sides of that sneaker-shoe stuck together.
It made me laugh; it looked like the shoe is tied up to the top, that it can be that way.
And soon, tomorrow, before I went away, I went to the shoemaker, took of my shoe and explained, asked for many holes, paid for each hole and tied the shoes up to the end.
Now, why and what is the purpose of all that...? And why don’t I just buy new shoes... those are good questions.

(2006)

when I was in skopje,
a short film with puppets to make,
while puppeteer kire was fixing the arms and legs and twisted joints
I got excited about modeling clay for some reason
and I could hardly wait for every puppet accident, that is, for some time for myself
to kneed the clay and tear, bore... I liked it a lot
here, look what I have made
it was in november 2007 in skopje

(2007)

Penalty interest, Client,
Transfer, Flat rate, Canceled payment, Registrar, Check,
Foreign currency savings, notarized or term Account,
Money Order!
All of those words were, to me as a child, unknown and terrifying words that my mother said when I was bad,
because, although she didn’t like it, she worked in a bank all her life, in INVEST bank.
So, no wonder I wanted and somehow managed to talk her into embroidering a money order with me.
She, pedantic and economic, as if she was making an annual account
Me, concentrated and bent over the embroidery, like I am trying to untie a dead knot on a shoe or to paint a head of the pilot inside a model plane.
Take a look, find the differences, and then take a thread and a needle and go for it!

(2007)

p

A platoon in the army is like a class in the school. And sergeant is like a homeroom teacher. He suggests to the captain which soldier should get a night out or a toilet cleaning punishment or a temporary arrest.
To keep track of his many soldiers and not to have to memorize everything, sergeant has his sergeant notebook to write. There, with a couple of notes, he roughly and often wrongly sketches the characters of soldiers. Once I had a chance to flip through it and for me it said something like: shirker, manipulator, faker...
Army, the tanks, dormitories, rules, uniforms, but the most important – soldiers.
Those people around you are the source of stories and funny situations, they are the cause of your worst troubles, until you learn how to talk to them or until you gain enough confidence to start singing.
And that takes time and courage.
So, to try to understand those other people at least a little better I started keeping my own archive of characters. During the long night time duties, I wrote in, detail by detail, about that man, a noticeable characteristic, a discrete reaction, what happened to him lately and how did they call him.
It all seemed to be true then...

(2002 - 2003)

My idea was, every time I get a free weekend, to give the uniform to my mother,
and she would widen the trouser legs and sharpen and release the tips of the collar on the shirt, , little by little, so that those changes don’t get noticed; and in spring, I would find myself in an uniform that resembles the clothes form the Seventies, just the way I like it.
And more, the trick with the buttons:
Several times we had the alarm, the trial of the start of the war, and the goal was to, as fast as possible,
Run out on the runaway, but fully equipped and in a “perfect shape”, meaning buttoned up all the way.
I always had a problem getting ready fast so I came up with a shirt that has thirty or so buttons, as much as I could fit, denser than on a Chinese shirt. And I thought about the panic and impracticability - but being forced to, in such a short time and under stress, to button up all those buttons - and while there’s a thunderstorm outside!

(2002 - 2003)

The purpose of compass is to find your way in nature, when you get lost. It comes in a solid leather case
and when you open it up, there’s a mirror that you set up so the body of the compass reflects in it with all sides of the world and a trembling needle... A soldier should always be neat and clean, shoes polished, shaved, buttoned up... So I sew two pockets to that leather case. There you can put a little lipstick and a crayon, so the soldier can use the mirror to fix the makeup, to be beautiful as a doll.

(2002 - 2003)

p

p

Military handkerchief was, together with the needle, thread, and a spare button, comb and a mirror, a mandatory part of military equipment that you get when you go out to town, a small town.
In the army I used to write a diary where I poured a good share of misery that gathered in my stomach, especially during the first couple of months.
And then I had a thought that I could embroider on that handkerchief a sentence from my diary that would represent a kind of a slogan, the essence of how I understood the army, a sentence you always carry in your pocket!
For example, once we were waiting on a field for some reason and there was a big anthill there.
Out of boredom, one soldier approached it, tinkered around with a stick. Another soldier came and crashed it with his boot. Then two more came and completely destroyed it and then the last soldier came and pissed on the remains of the anthill. Nice. And then everybody and everything calmed down and sunk into further boredom and wait. And when you ask him “But why you did that?” the soldier stares at you, something like a distant thought flies by, faster than sound, over the dark clouds in his head... but it all got better with a smile that brings back the good mood and a phrase that saves the day, like the uniform, came: “I don’t give a shit!”
And that was the right answer for even worse activities.
And so I started embroidering, the thread often tangled up, letters with bumps, swearing when I prick myself.
Embroidery... you can not think of more feminine job in the army... but, to my surprise, I already felt free to be as I am and “not to give a shit what others would think.” And various soldiers and officers were approaching to ask what would I write there and after I would recite the whole sentence to them, they would proudly say “You are right!”, each one of them, but of course, understanding the sentence completely wrong.

(2002 - 2003)

I tore off a button form a shirt, from a jacket, and from a coat, stole another set of military silverware, and in the gunsmith shop, I talked the craftsman into making at least two holes on the spoon, fork, and knife, so I can sew a button on them, without any logical reason.

I persuaded him by promising an erotic calendar as a gift, we broke at least one drill in the process, I happily sew the buttons and, I don’t know why, foolishly showed to many what I did.

(2002 - 2003)

This is the first object I made in the army and it helped me, together with one fight and one camera, to again feel one’s own there.
The S, F, K set I stole somewhere.
From an old table in the summer classroom I broke off that plank.
It was during the winter and I visualized how some object sinks into snow when you let it drop.
Well, that’s how I placed the spoon, fork, and knife on the plank and scratched a drawing around them with a knife, to completely fit the spoon first... The plank was made of dumb wood; it was hard to copy fork teeth, for example... At the end I cheated a little with superglue but you won’t notice.
S, F, and K I arranged properly and marked with one, two, or three vitamin sweets that we got as a snack and those sweets often got wet from rain in the warehouses and were decorated with stains, sometimes even had holes in them - I started liking them immediately.
And I just wanted to show that it is a spoon, a fork, and a knife, the way they taught us everything in the army: “Look here, I’ll demonstrate!”
I bore that plank whenever I didn’t get a night out on weekends, while everybody sleeps, for 15 minutes, until I get sleepy too. I kept it hidden behind the closet in sergeant’s room, I was afraid someone will, out of spite or misunderstanding, throw it in fire.
But, strangely, when I finished it and showed it around, many liked it, they felt they can relate to it somehow and I even heard a comment “Oh… creative!” from the mouth of a soldier who usually just cursed.

(2002 - 2003)

p

p

I am looking at them for a long time
but some three years ago I started touching them.
I like them.
Rubber bands are the cleanest example of what I am trying to present with all of my trash collections.
Rubber band, it's a circle, loose circle, or regular circle.
Millions, millions of identical pieces are manufactured every day, in mass production,
Made of rubber, not alive, not intended to continue their existence,
not made to last long,
They're not intended to change, they're not that important at all.
A rubber band hold stuff together, and like a dragon fly, perishes quickly.
It breaks easily, falls of by itself or gets thrown away, sometimes they lose ti while it's still whole, doesn't matter, it's cheap.
It stays lying there; no one will pick it up from the street.
So its short, from human perspective, useful existence goes by fast.
And then comes the exciting part:
Each identical piece (if we disregard color, shape, thickness, material… well not completely identical but still!)
Each mass produced copy slowly turns into - an Original.
How it snapped and where, who stepped on it or twisted it… time goes by, rain and sun.
A dog decided to piss right over it, the rubber stays captured in its current form. Flattened between other, heavier objects, it deforms and - clever little rubber band - remembers its shape. Some types of rubber, out of boredom, cover themselves in small cracks… and more, a lot more!
In the end, like everything else, they would decompose and disappear
but I won't let that happen!
I love them and I save them from destruction which may be a normal part of their life.
I put them in my albums so you who walk the streets with noses up and do not stare at the floor can examine them closely.

December 18, 2008

I’m writing from Spain, as better friends already know,
but to those who are not that good I have to confess something too,

I became the Madrid Garbageman.

yes, trash collector.

a volunteer, noone pays me, I do it out of love.

So, I walk the streets, I look carefully
and get excited about trash, miniatures,
I have a notebook and a card to pick them up easily,
I have albums at home where I arrange them,
wash them a little first,
later animate them and I am happy,
Marija, my girl, just looks at me,
I don’t know what she’s thinking and how long she would take it.

I don’t know if that has something to do with the theft of the computer,
they stole it from me on the first day
and I started paying more attention to everything around me,
and I realized there are many unnoticed, beautiful things
or it was always like that to me but in Belgrade and Prague I was too shy,
oh, I am embarrassed here too when some pretty girl walks by and sees me bending down,
I pretend I’m doing something else,
but I am a bad actor, I cannot hide the excitement and joy
when I see some incredible crumpled piece of paper
or a shabby, beautiful, stamped down bubble gum
not to mention balloons that children chewed up,
I forget the world around me then, I kneel on the ground, In the park,
I bought second-hand garbageman pants, the real ones,
and I search slowly,
it is not easy for me here in Madrid
but those are rare moments of lightness and devotion, play, concentrated exploration,
sad is a man who doesn’t have that kind of passionate obsession…

to cut it short,
in the next year I wish you to find
some obsession of your own
or to find courage for an already existing obsession
to live it freely and let go

small but precious thing, yes.

STAINS, HOLES, AND PATCHES,
RAGS, RIPS,... I even like those words by themselves,
to the great despair of my parents according to whom:
“I deform myself with my clothing”, “A young man but dressing like he’s old,
wearing something old, rude, primitive,
what only workers wore 50 years ago,
something miserable that immediately gives a different (bad) impression... awful, mending, MENDING!”

(2007)

p

I’m writing from Spain, as better friends already know,
but to those who are not that good I have to confess something too,

I became the Madrid Garbageman.

yes, trash collector.

a volunteer, noone pays me, I do it out of love.

So, I walk the streets, I look carefully
and get excited about trash, miniatures,
I have a notebook and a card to pick them up easily,
I have albums at home where I arrange them,
wash them a little first,
later animate them and I am happy,
Marija, my girl, just looks at me,
I don’t know what she’s thinking and how long she would take it.

I don’t know if that has something to do with the theft of the computer,
they stole it from me on the first day
and I started paying more attention to everything around me,
and I realized there are many unnoticed, beautiful things
or it was always like that to me but in Belgrade and Prague I was too shy,
oh, I am embarrassed here too when some pretty girl walks by and sees me bending down,
I pretend I’m doing something else,
but I am a bad actor, I cannot hide the excitement and joy
when I see some incredible crumpled piece of paper
or a shabby, beautiful, stamped down bubble gum
not to mention balloons that children chewed up,
I forget the world around me then, I kneel on the ground, In the park,
I bought second-hand garbageman pants, the real ones,
and I search slowly,
it is not easy for me here in Madrid
but those are rare moments of lightness and devotion, play, concentrated exploration,
sad is a man who doesn’t have that kind of passionate obsession…

to cut it short,
in the next year I wish you to find
some obsession of your own
or to find courage for an already existing obsession
to live it freely and let go

small but precious thing, yes.

I’m writing from Spain, as better friends already know,
but to those who are not that good I have to confess something too,

I became the Madrid Garbageman.

yes, trash collector.

a volunteer, noone pays me, I do it out of love.

So, I walk the streets, I look carefully
and get excited about trash, miniatures,
I have a notebook and a card to pick them up easily,
I have albums at home where I arrange them,
wash them a little first,
later animate them and I am happy,
Marija, my girl, just looks at me,
I don’t know what she’s thinking and how long she would take it.

I don’t know if that has something to do with the theft of the computer,
they stole it from me on the first day
and I started paying more attention to everything around me,
and I realized there are many unnoticed, beautiful things
or it was always like that to me but in Belgrade and Prague I was too shy,
oh, I am embarrassed here too when some pretty girl walks by and sees me bending down,
I pretend I’m doing something else,
but I am a bad actor, I cannot hide the excitement and joy
when I see some incredible crumpled piece of paper
or a shabby, beautiful, stamped down bubble gum
not to mention balloons that children chewed up,
I forget the world around me then, I kneel on the ground, In the park,
I bought second-hand garbageman pants, the real ones,
and I search slowly,
it is not easy for me here in Madrid
but those are rare moments of lightness and devotion, play, concentrated exploration,
sad is a man who doesn’t have that kind of passionate obsession…

to cut it short,
in the next year I wish you to find
some obsession of your own
or to find courage for an already existing obsession
to live it freely and let go

small but precious thing, yes.

I’m writing from Spain, as better friends already know,
but to those who are not that good I have to confess something too,

I became the Madrid Garbageman.

yes, trash collector.

a volunteer, noone pays me, I do it out of love.

So, I walk the streets, I look carefully
and get excited about trash, miniatures,
I have a notebook and a card to pick them up easily,
I have albums at home where I arrange them,
wash them a little first,
later animate them and I am happy,
Marija, my girl, just looks at me,
I don’t know what she’s thinking and how long she would take it.

I don’t know if that has something to do with the theft of the computer,
they stole it from me on the first day
and I started paying more attention to everything around me,
and I realized there are many unnoticed, beautiful things
or it was always like that to me but in Belgrade and Prague I was too shy,
oh, I am embarrassed here too when some pretty girl walks by and sees me bending down,
I pretend I’m doing something else,
but I am a bad actor, I cannot hide the excitement and joy
when I see some incredible crumpled piece of paper
or a shabby, beautiful, stamped down bubble gum
not to mention balloons that children chewed up,
I forget the world around me then, I kneel on the ground, In the park,
I bought second-hand garbageman pants, the real ones,
and I search slowly,
it is not easy for me here in Madrid
but those are rare moments of lightness and devotion, play, concentrated exploration,
sad is a man who doesn’t have that kind of passionate obsession…

to cut it short,
in the next year I wish you to find
some obsession of your own
or to find courage for an already existing obsession
to live it freely and let go

small but precious thing, yes.

I’m writing from Spain, as better friends already know,
but to those who are not that good I have to confess something too,

I became the Madrid Garbageman.

yes, trash collector.

a volunteer, noone pays me, I do it out of love.

So, I walk the streets, I look carefully
and get excited about trash, miniatures,
I have a notebook and a card to pick them up easily,
I have albums at home where I arrange them,
wash them a little first,
later animate them and I am happy,
Marija, my girl, just looks at me,
I don’t know what she’s thinking and how long she would take it.

I don’t know if that has something to do with the theft of the computer,
they stole it from me on the first day
and I started paying more attention to everything around me,
and I realized there are many unnoticed, beautiful things
or it was always like that to me but in Belgrade and Prague I was too shy,
oh, I am embarrassed here too when some pretty girl walks by and sees me bending down,
I pretend I’m doing something else,
but I am a bad actor, I cannot hide the excitement and joy
when I see some incredible crumpled piece of paper
or a shabby, beautiful, stamped down bubble gum
not to mention balloons that children chewed up,
I forget the world around me then, I kneel on the ground, In the park,
I bought second-hand garbageman pants, the real ones,
and I search slowly,
it is not easy for me here in Madrid
but those are rare moments of lightness and devotion, play, concentrated exploration,
sad is a man who doesn’t have that kind of passionate obsession…

to cut it short,
in the next year I wish you to find
some obsession of your own
or to find courage for an already existing obsession
to live it freely and let go

small but precious thing, yes.

REPORT
from the first attempt at selling precious trash on the flea market
in Kolbens, in Prague

Diary entry, July 2007.

I finaly got the courage to try to shoe my albums of trash outside of the gallery,
To the “ordinary people” on the market..

I got up early, it was still dark, I put on an elegant jacket, a tie, and black pants.
I took a cardboard box with me and an empty beer crate, my albums of trash, a camera and off I go.

It already dawned when I arrived, the rest of the sellers were already unpacking.
I chose a spot next to a counter with kids apparel, acrros the road they sold old uniforms, and to the left some ropes and wires. I made a table from the box , turned the crate to the side, sat down and… felt fright.

On the one hand, it was really simple to come here and just show to the people what I got but… I almost got frightened that my trash will enrage the passersby.
I thought how would people react in Serbia… patiently and carefully I wrote on the box: “30 korunas EACH PIECE OF TRASH,” I drew and decorated with ornaments those simple words…and then I got brave, opened the albums and arranged the bags with single pieces of trash, and started fishing
I sat on a stupid side, the sun soon started shining straight into my eyes, so I could barely see the customers who approached and I frowned, craned my neck to see their subtle reactions.

In the albums there were collections of spat-out, trampled gum, crumpled pieces of paper, teared pieces of plastic bags, deformed packaging of candy and chocolate…all of it collected from the dirty streets of Madrid, plus a collection of entangled rubber bands and threads, like drawings, found alongside the Turkish market in Berlin.
U albumima su bile kolekcije ispljunutih, zgaženih žvaka, zgužvanih papirića, iskidanih komada kesa, deformisanih ambalaža od bombona i čokolada...sve to sakupljeno sa madridskih prljavih ulica, plus kolekcija zapletenih gumica i končića, kao crteža, nadjenih duž turske pijace u Berlinu.

That was my arsenal and I watched closely, what it will do to the people. Luckily, I didn’t expect much.
People passed by, rarely a pleasant face – one women stopped,
Got interested and asked: But why Trash, after all that means something bad, makes it worthless, like it is something from the trashcan - Yuck!..
but, when I look closer…those really are trash, then, ok, bye!
I would be happy to see many such people questioning but after that one, people just passed by – workers who have just one day off, middleaged couples, young men and some women…I watch and,to be honest – I was surprised how people are ugly!
Rough faces, tiny eyes hidden in the flesh of their faces, no trace of beauty, humor or feeling for something other than those most ordinary everyday things, at least that’s how I saw them.

They carried pieces of furniture, tools, bought used things because they are cheaper…only few stopped by me for a moment.
I carefully examined his face – he didn’t change the expression when leaving, not at all, no smile, not a trace of anger, confusion, no question or fooling around with me… n o t h i n g!
I thought I should go back to gallery where I escaped from to accomplish some kind of contact with people who, on their own, would never peep into a gallery.
But no, back to the gallery no way!
Then I looked at my counter from the customers’ point of view
and I realized that I need to have a bigger sign – what it was, maybe even why I sell trash.

The next man I talked to advised me to make a painting out of the trash, under the glass, and put it in a nice frame, and then it would be a full story, an like this there are not too many people who would bring trash home with them, but like this…well, I could try it, under the glass, thanks for the idea.

And later, one of 30 stopped by, 1 od 100 had a comment.
My friend came and told me how some german mad a “BOMB” on eBay selling worn underwear and similar unusual goods…hm, interesting, germans…

The price of my trash is not small but that is intentional. Too cheap and they would not interest anyone.
And then my beautiful wife came and pretended like she is flipping through albums with great interest.
Man, bunch of people gathered immediately and listened how I am trying to explain to Marija how come those albums…but noone bought anything.
Then I walked among the people with the open album trying to persuade them, showing them that beauty…they thought it was funny before.
Well, I didn’t expect to sell anything - but someone should at least say something!
And then a magician came and showed us all the things she collects, haha!!
Various toys, like games, like…riddles, a problem solvers…how to explain?
He gave us his card and I was happy to meet him - I did think I would attract all kinds of weirdos with my merchandise.

An finally - a nice young couple from Russia approached, our brothers.
They chose one piece and seriously wanted to buy it!!
I could not believe it but I said the real price – the guy was surprised, swallowed – and paid!
The girl got one piece of trash as a gift, we celebrated that moment, exchanged addresses and laughed.
And then another one! Now Czech, an architect, bought from Marija one crumpled piece of paper. The business began to bloom - and stopped!
The market was already closing.
Still, we went home happy and enriched, made lunch…and fell asleep.

This experiment taught me a lot about "preačpuzenthsjacija" - what a word – advertising and retailing, in general, but also, I think, no “normal person” would buy a pice of trash from my collection.
Except, in Berlin there were more of those “exceptions”, like two nice Russians who, amazingly, paid for something they usually trample on the street.

Maybe it would be worth trying again, at least because of the people you meet, those who fall for my bait.
I salute you, cheers!
Milos
prague

I did not learn to draw when I was supposed to.
Art lessons in primary school were always on Thursdays
I remember very clearly:
Wednesday, half past nine P.M. Yell and tremor in our house.
I don't have a drawing for tomorrow's class. Again! As always.
Swearing that this time is really the last time, my mother takes a pencil, wooden colors
And draws me a picture on assigned topics:
"Spring of spring", "Holiday, finally", "School again"...or
"Miserably fell in love", "My first bruise", "the Day when I act like a pussy"...all right, there were no as such assignments in my school.

But my mother's drawings WERE made in style that I still am crazy about:
Normal style.
Do you understand it?
Calm, describing lines. Surfaces colored equally, gently.
Scenes seen in total, from point of view of an average person.
Without any extravagance, no outstanding characters.
no dramatic, expressive profiles in close ups.
Without rubbish on the streets but WITH flowers in flowerpots.
Without affective pencil or brush movements,
Without strewed colored blots and disheveled paintbrush traces.
Style Normal.

Those were drawings for grade C, sometimes D.
I hated my teacher, because of her character, not because of grades...

Few years after, in my classmates' memory books, I used to leave
naughty paper collages made from pictures from erotic magazines.
Girls from my class found it disgusting but they made my friends laugh...

In short, that was my art education in primary school.
In high school, I immediately started with avantgarde works:
To spill rests of wooden colors to paper,
To take death notes from news paper like background... anything that seems "strange"...
...what can I do - high school.

So, I never past through proper and boring process of learning to draw by nature.
That amateurism was magnified by my hardheaded,
Nearly maniac devotion to a chosen thing
And detailed and persnickety, handwork.
In case of drawing, a nose were at the same distance from paper
as pen.

Coloring - engraving with wooden colors till paper don't drown itself in fat color
Or, poor one, tears off.

On photographs (polaroids!) you can see my parents in worry-less days, celebrating new year's 1976.
Second one is from their wedding in town hall, Belgrade, when there was no way back,
no return.

When I was a boy, I used to help my grandma in the country to water the flowers: pelargonium, impatiens, heartsease... The flowers she planted in big metal cans and not in the books. And I went straight for the book. But the experiment failed,
because I put too little soap and too little shampoo. And I put too little paste.
And the plant died.

(2003)

My grandpa Milan has war medals and when he poses for a photo, he decorates himself with them, all formal and proper.
On my way back from Niš, from grandpa’s, I had a good look at manhole covers on the street, how they have different shapes and how they are firm, heavy, solid, serious... I thought of grandpa’s medals. And then I combined all sorts of things in my head and on paper, what to do with the manholes, where to put them, until, at the end, again, my wife simply said: “And why don’t you put them next to the real manholes, and you can write something else on them.”
And I have already thought of that myself, I swear, I wrote it down, but I haven’t had decided yet...
And so I looked for a sculptor who would make models, and the smelter cast and brought me little bronze manhole covers, I could barely carry that bag home. Then for a long time I was trying to get a permit form Belgrade Roads. And then, luckily, they were changing the pavement downtown and I hung around with the workers and in the smoke of fresh, hot, black asphalt, I impressed my manholes in the pavements. While at it, I also threw in some glasses, badges, singles... they let me play. I was happy in advance about the surprise of passersby when they discover them, because my manhole covers are just like the real ones, high heels cannot break them. When strolled over, they just get shinier, soles polish them.




(2005)

It was a written composition assignment in high school, the subject was “one of my dreams.”
And I made that picture book, drew and wrote there, on the class. And I got an F because I “missed the subject” but later I stole my notebook from the teacher’s room and with D. Danilkov I improved it a little, his beautiful sister Zita Molnar colored the drawings, we got money from Soros fund and published it.
We sold four copies, the rest we give away as presents when we visit somebody.

(1995)

Here, I'm sending a rubber band
I know it's not like me,
nothing carved, crumpled, exaggerated
just a rubber circle that holds the table
and gets flattened into an ellipsis when you lean on the table,
when you push it...