Darko Maver was an artistic
hoax created by
0100101110101101.ORG.
According to the hoaxers, Maver was born in
Krupanj, in
1962. Maver's supposed
body of work was
pvc sculptures of
aborted fetuses,
corpses,
rapes and other assorted acts of violence, which he then
photographed and presented in various
galleries across
Europe. In fact, these morbid
simulacra were photographs of the real thing, mostly taken from newswire services, then passed off to the unsuspecting
art world.
His work "began" with challenging images of violence from
Yugoslavia's civil war, backdated to make it appear that he had created the images in the late
1980s. It is unswervingly challenging and grotesque, but with the images assumed to be
authored instead of merely culled from the internet, Maver began to make a name for "himself" in Eastern European galleries.
His mid-period work is presented as
poetry, and this is where it becomes clear in
hindsight that Maver was a
hoax. His
hackneyed takes on being "
condemned to live" are such
rank and
trite nihilistic expressions that it's hard to believe people continued to take him seriously.
Maver's final work came as
Tanzen Der Spinne, or "
Dance of the Spider." For this, Maver once again pretended that the images were of
pvc dummies, made up to look like assorted
gore, and arranged with a speculative narrative "
web" that was referenced in the title.
This work was actually more photos taken from the then-raging conflict in Yugoslavia, but was aesthetically connected to the lurid photos of
Weegee (who started the public's fascination with
crime scene photography) and
Joel-Peter Witkin's grotesque use of human corpses. There is also an implicit relationship between this work and what
Susan Sontag would call the "
aesthetics of
photojournalism" with relation to the numbing affect of aesthetics when faced with horrors.
The work was an unqualified success, with Tanzen Der Spinne being featured in galleries from
Ljubljana to
Bologna.
However, it's in this context of growing success that the
hoaxters pulled off their masterstroke. Darko Maver's work began to "disappear," the originals were claimed to be destroyed, and the ellusive "artist" went into hiding to avoid the authorities, who viewed his work as
subversive.
By
negating his work and placing the blame on state officials, who (of course) denied any knowledge of Maver, Maver became an
underground celebrity.
It was claimed that Maver was arrested and held by the authorities, and soon afterwards two
photographs were released of him, one showing him imprisoned and the other showing him dead.
Kosovar authorities were blamed, and the myth of Darko began in earnest, with several artists paying tribute to him and his "groundbreaking work." The exposure culminated with a "retrospective" at the Venice Biannual exhibition for new works, a respected stop on the international gallery circuit. Like the
cliche goes, Maver had to "die" to be respected.
Of course, the troubling thing is that Maver never really existed. He was a made-up man, putting out made-up work. What does this say about authenticity in art?
Soon after Darko's appearance at the Biannual, 0100101110101101.ORG (which had been Darko's primary press organ) admitted that he had been a hoax, used to show the "permeability of the art world."
For further information, see
Luther Blissett.net or 0100101110101101.ORG