David Maljkovic in Low Resolution

For the past 15 years, Croatian artist David Maljkovic has been fascinated with the French car company Peugeot and its futuristic “concept cars” conceived in the 1980s to model what the car industry would look like in the 2000s--now evidence of a long-gone belief in progress and technology. In his film Out of Projection (2009–2015), filmed at Peugeot headquarters and innovation campus in Sochaux, automobile prototypes and former employees serve as symbolic links between past and future. Centered on this landmark work, which is presented through related projects, archive, documentation and film stills, this artist’s book constitutes an emblematic case study of David Maljkovic’s practice and obsessions.

Designed by London-based graphic design studio Abäke, the volume is published as the editorial sequel of the exhibition In Low Resolution, held at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2014 and co-organized with Festival d’Automne (Paris). Besides publishing previously unseen material, it also comprises an essay by curator and art critic François Piron as well as an interview with Julien Fronsacq, curator of the Palais de Tokyo exhibition.

Born in 1973 in Croatia, David Maljkovic lives in Zagreb and Berlin. Including films, sculpture, collage and installations, his work constitutes a critical research into the legacies of modernism (initially the architectural symbols and sculptural forms of former socialist Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe). He investigates these remnants from the past in relationship with the present but also with their potential--real or fictional--in an imminent or distant future, at the crossroads between science fiction and documentary film. Maljkovic is also particularly interested in exhibition strategies and the semiotics of display.