Mario Matoković was born in 1985 in Osijek, Croatia. He graduated in 2010 from the Art Academy in Osijek, in the Department of Fine Art, Sub-department of Graphic. He has been a member of the
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I make use of old, used, rusted barrels and set them up as ready-made on a sliding surface of a graphic pres. Either the top or the bottom part of the barrel is served as a ready-made product, devoid of any intervention on it, which is as such graphically imprinted, making an interesting game the result to which (in the form of an imprint) cannot be known to anyone, myself included, until the graphic sheet is removed from the matrix. This is the very reason why I find the whole process to be a kind of “ready-made” in graphics, where graphics as a medium is completely adapted to the concept of the work as a whole. The name of the work is in a direct connection with the oil barrel situation in the world, so each work’s name is presented in the form of the American dollar, e.g. “56, 47$”. This work reflects one time, an historic moment, also I conclude that it is also a sort of homage to the time in which it was made. Thus this work becomes an eternal reminder of the strange time in which the values are dictated by megalomaniacal energy industry, whose success or crisis reflects on the life of world population.