The Latvian National Museum of Art presents the solo exhibition ‘Sailing to Post-History’ and a large-scale photographic installation from the Casual Passer-By series by the Paris-based prominent contemporary artist Braco Dimitrijević. The Casual Passer –By is created especially for the visual arts programme of the Cēsis Art Festival and the collection of the future Contemporary Art Museum of Latvia. The creation of the artwork is supported by ITERA Ltd.
The exhibition takes place within collaborative project "Experiment and excellence", supported by the European Commission (EC).
‘Post-history’ is a term coined by the artist to denote the time of simultaneous co-existence of different values, defined by a diversity of the points of departure on which the evaluation is based. The ‘Sailing to Post-History’ was first presented in 2009 at the Palazzo Ca’Pesaro musuem of contemporary art in Venice as part of the 53rd Venice Biennale.
Braco Dimitrijević is considered as one of the founders of conceptual art. As early as in 1963, aged 10, he created his first project of conceptual art, making a World Flag out of a floor rag for ships and boats to use as an alternative to national flags which have to be changed as the vessel enters the territorial waters of another country. In the 1970s, Dimitrijević started his Casual Passer-By series of large-scale photographs, based on the idea that any single one of us can be as significant as the most famous politician or media celebrity.
Braco Dimitrijević has exhibited at many of the world’s most prominent museums and art galleries; he has mounted solo exhibitions at London’s Tate Gallery; Kunsthalle Bern; Museum Ludwig in Cologne; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; the Vienna MUMOK; St Petersburg Russian Museum; Contemporary Art Centre in Beijing and the Paris Musée d’Orsay. Dimitrijević has contributed to the Kassel documenta (editions V, VI and IX) and repeatedly taken part in the Venice Biennale, also showing at the São Paulo, Sydney, Havana, Santa Fe and Guangzhou biennials. Dimitrijević’s Casual Passer-By also went on view on the façade of Centre Georges Pompidou as part of the widely-acclaimed ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ (‘Magicians of the Earth’) contemporary art exhibition.
Braco Dimitrijević was born in 1948 to the family of the prominent painter Vojo Dimitrijević in Yugoslavia. The artist graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Art (1971) and went on to study at St. Martin’s School of Art in London (1971–1973). He is currently residing alternately in Dubrovnik and Paris.
