Alan Phelan, “Goran's Stealth Yugo”, 2009, steel, plastic, rubber. Formal Gardens, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, May - November 2009. Image © Alan Phelan, IMMA, Mother's Tankstation.
The rain stopped, the scaffolding was removed, and the chromed skeleton of the Yugoslav self-management’s automotive industry wonder and pride – the Yugo car - beamed under the Irish sun. The Dublin artist Alan Phelan, and Kragujevac engineer, Goran Krstic, could now go for a pint at a nearby pub.
With the installation of “Goran's Stealth Yugo” in the fountain of the Irish Museum of Modern Art's Formal Gardens, earlier this summer, the collaboration between Phelan and Krstic was brought to an end, but the Yugo - together with all the associations attached to this car and the country whose name it carries – then started it's journey at the far end of Western Europe. Here, the Yugo exceeded the fame of the archetypical East-German Trabant, the car that “gave communism a bad name”, and overtook it’s previously unsurpassed rival at the bend between Eastern-European daily life and Western-European perception of that life, and parked itself in the middle of the cultural and artistic dialogue between these two sides of Europe – at least in Dublin.
The Yugo is no longer in production, the country after which it was named has ceased to exist, and Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson also moved on to newer cars after driving the yellow 'Yugo' in 'Die Hard 3'. All that was left of the Yugo are anecdotes or nostalgic memories. However, in order for individual recollections to become a collective cultural memory, the intervention of artist is needed. Alan Phelan knows how this is to be done. Using parataxis, a technique by which different elements are put together side by side, seemingly randomly, he 'placed' a car in a museum, industry into art, and the dead Yugoslavia into the living Ireland. Yugoslavian culture - the materialistic, 'historic' one - gained with that an important aesthetic homage, far from the borders of the countries that once shared in what they felt to be their common culture.
Emerging, unexpectedly, from the Dublin 'Yugo' - raised high above the museum's fountain on a stand - are many peculiar rubber 'buds' that grow out in all directions, just like the associations and metaphors attached to the car. The 'twigs' and 'leaves' are the product of the clever "stealth" strategy used by Phelan: what needs to be done is, metaphorically, be on your toes to reach and un-camouflage the background story of Yugo and Yugoslavia.
The idea for an Irish Yugo came up three years ago while Phelan was exhibiting in the SKC gallery, Belgrade. At the time some of his interests lied in the car and boy racing culture, and he established contacts with Zastava and in Kragujevac where he met Goran Krstic, chief designer of Zastava Automobiles. After Phelan saw Krstic's 3D CAD projects and designs of futuristic vehicles, Phelan asked if it would be possible to produce a blueprint of a Yugo Coral in a "Phelan" style. Krstic said that this was quite possible. The first blueprint – with "buds" included - was exhibited later that year in Belgrade, Dublin and Portadown.
In the meantime Phelan received support from the IMMA for his Yugo project, and last year, together with Museum’s curator Sean Kissane he again visited Serbia, where they agreed that Krstic will build the sculpture in Kragujevac. After that Krstic made Yugo in the backyard of his home, and installed it in Dublin.
Alan Phelan is one of the most original contemporary Irish artists. His work is multidisciplinary and encompasses sculpture and installations, events, video and photography. He was born in 1969 in Dublin, graduated in Dublin and did his masters in New York. The former Fulbright student exhibited extensively in Ireland, America and Europe, including Slovenia and Serbia. He is an author and editor of books and art publications. Sculpture "Goran's stealth Yugo" was followed by Phelan's project "Fragile Absolute" at the IMMA this summer. This was partially inspired by texts by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek and by the funeral of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The exhibition closes in November.
Dejan Novacic
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