Genius Loci

D. Grba, AIDS Decade, poster (detail), 1995.

The work of Dejan Grba is marked by a parallelism of artistic strategies characteristic for the Nineties. This artist is equally at home in paintings (whose techniques vary further on from traditional painting style to something that could be conditionally labeled ‘neo Pop Art’) and the new media. The issue which Dejan Grba most frequently addresses is the problem of identity, of real and fictional personality, most consequently expressed in his curatorial show Stealth in Dom omladine Gallery, in October 1995. A clear example of such approach is the poster production of ‘Guerilla Girls’ Enfant Terrible’ association, anonymously installed in galleries and at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. These announcements dealt with the most drastic regressions in the current Yugoslav politics – the war and media corruption, the violence of new technologies, the hypocrisy of political correctness, etc. Subversive (almost underground) way of distribution and ‘guerilla-like’ concealing of authorship were completely in accordance with the sharp irony with which Dejan Grba observes and treats the phenomena, individuals and institutions in his surroundings.