Q.: Why do you work with Ilija Soskic?

Ilija Soskic is one of the most interesting artists that entered into Actionism and the project of opening at the globally critical moment that was taking place already at the end of the sixties. Though he emerged at the same time as Arte Povera appeared in Italy, from the beginning,

Soskic showed that he had something extra, thanks to three elements:

1) His concept of energy, employed through gesture and artworks (a concept that he shared with the greatest international artists, from Beuys to Nagasawa).

2) His intuition of the imminent explosion of the western European system, and in particular of Yugoslavia, which he belonged to and that he considers and wants to still declare himself part of, in so much as a State that unified different cultures (he refutes any form of racism or sectarianism).

3) His continual writing/painting, or rather, his continual diary of thoughts (and of political criticism), that he carries out through drawings and writings, a system through which he has developed a philosophical reflection of his own and “on” the philosophy of the nineteen hundreds, from Wittgenstein and Ramsey to today. I am writing a (first) critical volume on Ilija Soskic, which will be followed by the international edition of his writings/drawings/gestures on paper.

Simonetta Lux, Rome, 18th of March 2004 ** Published in Art in Theory, on the subject of Wandtafelzeichnungen e della filosofia di Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)

** The show (27th January 2004) and the International Conference L’occhio non vede (27th February) took place at the MLAC A translation of the interview with Simonetta Lux published in “Pobjeda” – the leading Montenegrin newspaper – on the 24/03/2004 (www.pobjeda.cg.yu)

Ilija Soskic, Studi per Entscheidungsproblem, 2003, gouache e inchiostro su carta a4.