By Natalija Paunić

Marko Kratohvil creates in two mediums of artistic expression - sculpture and drawing, but does not remain in the traditional framework of these disciplines, particularly regarding sculpture. His approach to sculpting as a process, to object as an entity of analysis and to materials as means of visual as well as revelatory expression, shows that Kratohvil inherits the artistic legacy of various revolutionary movements and ways of articulation in the history of sculpture. The fact that he is directly involved in the process of fabricating his large-format public projects, which are perceived as site-specific installations, or some sort of monument, suggests that he approaches the process of creating an artwork from the position of the Renaissance homo universalis or Constructivist artist-engineer. Having in mind that he uses steel, iron or mix of various industrial materials, the sort and the range of labor needed to be done (not just because of dimensions of the art piece, but also the complexity of the manufacturing process) requires a wide scope of knowledge in different fields. The artwork conceptualized and produced in this way brings back the notion and importance of the authenticity to contemporary sculpture, the forgotten concept which implies execution by the artist’s hand, his “fingerprint”. 

It is interesting in this context, regardless of the media, to observe and compare Kratohvil's need for control over the process of production, perfectionism in the execution and restraint in expression, with his ideas about the spontaneity and the unpredictability of the creative process and the final outcome. This ambivalence reflects opposite tendencies in 20th-century art: balance of form, analysis, and abstraction, that both constructivist and modern sculpture tend to acquire in contrast to dadaist, surrealist, and abstract expressionist celebration of chance, accident, chaos, submission to the unconscious, and arbitrariness. The relationship between what artists consider the rational, objective, controlled approach to the process of creation and to its product, in Kratohvil’s work is intertwined with the approach usually perceived as subjective, impulsive, irrational and uncontrolled. His artistic language is the result of both, his thoughtful analysis of the outer world and deliberation as well as the reflection of the inner one. These ambivalent tendencies in his artworks don't imply a contradiction. They are rather an evidence of artist’s contemporaneity and an illustration of the need to “return to order” after the postmodernist “chaos” (pluralism). At the same time his works are carrying the experience of the whole century of experimenting, research and movement of boundaries in the possibilities of artistic expression. 

Kratohvil’s drawings and sculptures share the aspiration to investigate the relationship between form and space. In both media he searches for balance in the dynamics of independent forms and the unity of all elements as a whole, which is characterized equally by structural order and respect for visual aspects. Lines in his drawings, in the same way as the forms in sculptures, always imply the motion, rhythm, and speed of the movement in space, conveying potential energy. This is expressed in their mutual relationship and within the individual elements as an illustration of the vigor of a single moment. The inexpressible and elusive specific moment, that sculptures and drawings tend to enhance, is exemplified, more in drawings and less in sculptures, by the traces of spontaneity in the execution. In spite of the visual similarities between drawings and sketches for sculptures, Kratohvil’s drawings should not be analyzed as sketches, nor should be compared to them. Drawings are independent visual artworks, that have none of the characteristics of sketches nor their function. By using the color in the manner of a painter, letting himself to experiment and yet almost always sticking to graphism of the drawing, the artist shows the capability to completely independently research his own artistic expression in a different medium. His sketches for sculptures/installations, in contrast to his drawings, always imply their function, both in the treatment of the line and in relation to space. 

It is important to emphasize the context in which the artist works. The age of developed capitalism and the international market often requires from artist to make a compromise or sacrifice his own artistic statement and needs. In Kratohvil’s public sculptures and commissions, this compromise is reduced to adapting the form and relevance to the environment in which it is located - from the geographical position to the symbolic meaning that it aims to express. Nevertheless, in this adjustment, the artist is not quitting his style of visual expression; regarding form, material, composition and approach to the process of production, Kratohvil relies on his own artistic credo, freely and without much sacrifice. 

Ana Simona

Selena Vicković

Selena Vicković’s painting, in regard to formal transformation, has gone from her early explorative work in the 1980s, where she focused on elements and technique: shape, the expressiveness of colours, their contrasts and bold brushwork, to the period (during the 1990s) where symbolic and, sometimes, emblematic content of the painting took primacy over the exploration of form now used to create the atmosphere of the scenery, to her mature artworks after the 2000s when she attained the clarity and simplicity of form and thematic wholeness.

Still, there is a certain common denominator that connects all these periods making them, not only stylistically recognizable, but also unmistakably evocative of a particular sentiment, despite the stylistic and thematic shifts. It appears that this common denominator, the fundamental feature of her artwork, is made of something almost intangible, something we primarily perceive as an “atmosphere”. We see it materialized in a rough, yet, gentle drawing; in the use of bright reds, blues and greens, and her necessity for constant tonal variations (even on the monochromatic surfaces); in the discontinuous, brisk brushwork and always a certain kind of expressiveness — be it the bright contrasts or disturbing scenes. Also, the choice of subjects in her paintings was affected by the changes of context: during the period of war in the 1990s, her work was characterized by feelings of discomfort, fear, anxiety worry and nostalgia (this becomes apparent in the series of work where the motif of target is painted on a man’s head and over the house). The birth of her child was also followed by a thematic shift in her artworks, now focusing on games, toys, family portraits and landscapes dedicated to her son. But, even when she paints for her child and chooses toys for the topic, the scenery does not provoke the feeling of comfort and joy, nor they are cheerful, naive or childlike. By illustrating mutilated body parts of either people or toys, eyes with no pupils, or simply by the choice of colour or the drawing itself, she points to the delicacy of children’s emotional states, the fragility of the constructs and notions we have about the world (and ourselves), as well as the fragility of form, which she uses to emphasize transience, ephemerality and aging.

There is something rather melancholic in her paintings: as if she is repeatedly evoking the memories of toys from our childhood in order to elicit nostalgia, yet not entirely so, as feeling nostalgic about a traumatic childhood would be contradictory. Ambivalence is, therefore, one of the essential features of her work. Drawings and paintings provoke both empathy and contradictory feelings: simultaneous tenderness and sadness but fear as well. Undefined and ambiguous scenes, characters and contexts, evoke the feeling of mild discomfort every time we look at her artworks. It is not only form that creates the impression of physical, emotional and mental frailness but also a peculiar blend of incongruous motifs within one painting: in the painting Warrior Baby (2009) we see a baby riding a one-eyed teddy bear and holding a large metal knife in his/her hand; in the series of work titled Crying Game a girl’s head is placed next to a gun, and, even though the context of the scenery is quite associative, it is not entirely understandable.

Brilliantly conceived by the artist herself, the title of the series of work Crying Game¹ sums up the feelings triggered by her art, as well as the message it sends. On one occasion, the artist described the feeling as “the moment when a child is on a thin line between exaltation and despair....the feeling of something, simultaneously gentle and cruel, funny and scary, comforting and disturbing ...the moment of balancing between two extremities... comparable to walking on a tightrope.” It looks as if she is using her art to explain the cruelty of the world to a child, as well as to remind the adults of children’s fragility, instability and unpredictability that we all carry.

Speaking of fragility, it is interesting to analyse how the female body is presented in her art. It appears that its treatment significantly changed from her early artworks to the mature ones. The subject of her artwork from the 1980s is not only the female body, but also feminity/femininity ¬ through the series In Vogue – which was an important part of her artistic exploration. During 1986 and 1987 she created a series of work where the female body is illustrated as hefty and voluminous, but not generic; while some presented women who seem to be enjoying their lavishly plump bodies, the others are scared, hiding and cowering. This is why these pieces of art realistically point to the complexity of a woman’s attitude towards her body, its size, weight, expression, sexuality, attractiveness and appearance.

In the 1990s, the series of work Nameless carries the title that suggests disrespectful treatment of women’s identities, personalities, individualities and cruelty: women hiding their eyes and faces, holding their foreheads worriedly, pressing their cheeks, crying, scarred and desperate. Bearing in mind that the art pieces were created in the period between 1994 and 1996, facial expressions of these female characters can be linked to the psychological states of women in the time of war, their feelings of sorrow, loss, worry, traumas of suffered violence and hopelessness.

In her latest work, the female bodies, usually young girls’, are materialized in toys. And yet, despite this objectification, it seems as if they still keep their corporeality; when observing them, we cannot be quite sure whether they are characters, objects or persons. The girls/women express their emotional states, show motility and possess expressive capacities of their bodies, characters and gestures. The artist, yet again, creates the impression of confusion and discomfort, using ambiguity and ambivalence: by erasing the clear disambiguation between an object and a person, she points to the ubiquitous objectification and commodification of both women’s and all other bodies in visual culture.

*

After a decade of working and exhibiting outside Serbia, Selena Vickovic is presenting her art to the Belgrade audience in her solo show at the November Gallery. The selected paintings and drawings belong to the latest phase of her work that bears the maturity of the artistic expression acquired by years-long painterly experience and a curious fascination with motifs of toys and games. Carefully collecting toys from both her and her family members’ childhood, by purchasing them at various flea markets, the artist creates her personal little cabinet of rarities. In these old, once used, broken, dysfunctional, worn out toys, she finds fragments of other people’s memories and, through the reinterpretation of these fragments, gives them a new meaning with every new artwork she creates. The world of her toys is far from idealization of childhood and romantic nostalgia for good, old days. Quite the contrary, the artist reminds us of the ambivalent feelings that can be found in any memory of any time, and employs defamiliarization of her presentations to emphasize the fragility of memory and perception.

Ana Simona Zelenović

In U10, a contemporary art gallery in the center of Belgrade, from the 28th of February till the 16th of March, the audience can see the artworks of the master students of the Painting department of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. The pieces are selected by the U10 Art Collective consisting of the artists and art historians.

After a brief and insightful visit to the faculty, the collective has invited seventeen young artists to show their works within the exhibition setting made through collaboration and free communication with the members of the collective. The goal of the exhibition is, in accordance with the fundamental idea of U10 Art Space, to present and promote the young art scene and to give the opportunity to the artists of the youngest generation to gain experience in exhibition setting and organizing, and communicating with the public and professionals, as well as to get to know and present themselves to the local scene.

Artists: Nebojša Adamović, Dunja Ćorlomanović, Nikola Dimitrović, Katarina Đorđević, Kosta Đorđević, Nina Jeftić, Una Knežević, Jasna Konstantin, Ivana Kucina, Jovana Kulezić, Andrea Moračanin, Dunja Ožegović, Aleksandar Rakezić, Tomica Radulović, Vukašin Raduški, Anja Tončić, Katarina Vijatov

In his artwork, Nebojsa Adamovic is playing with meanings and representation as such. He is questioning the usage of different media in creating artwork and how those various techniques affect ways of representation and shape our ways of seeing. Adamovic creates confusion in the viewer by showing the only partial image, which then calls the one who’s watching to recreate the whole in her/his head. This omission of the whole and creating confusion on purpose may also implicate tendencies towards surrealist scenery.

The series of eight drawings by Dunja Ćorlomanović is particularly interesting to me because it expresses deep religious or spiritual feelings - not that often present in the art of young contemporary artists in Serbia. The drawings are subtle and soft, made with delicate lines so they instantly create the feeling of tenderness. The text on the drawings, written in the manner of confession, affects the viewer with its honesty - in example when the one reads “I am not finding you, Lord” on the white paper with just a couple of tiny lines drawn next to the text, one is immediately feeling compassion with the artist’s sadness, despair or fears. It has a strong message in the times of alienation from the spiritual where prayer and confession don’t play a big role in the life of young people.

The art piece by Nikola Dimitrović Trag ogoljenog (The trace of the naked one) made in mixed media is also a type of confession. The illuminated black Cyrillic letters fixed on the wall say “I am guilty“. This statement put on the empty wall with just one small almost abstract object fixed below the letters indicates the awareness of the consequences of one’s own wrong deeds. It seems to me like the prevailing feelings are loneliness and redemption. Everyone looking instantly comes up with that one person who did them wrong or to whom he-she did wrong, and the artwork leaves them standing like that in the gallery thinking about that person or event for a while.

Katarina Đorđević’s artwork Memento mori is a hanging installation, rectangular in shape, consisting of canvas covered in soil. The title itself is explaining the artwork - remembering death as it is omnipresent and guaranteed. The piece is somehow meditative, but also very dark, it’s reminding the spectator of peacefulness and stillness death brings. Formally, it’s following the tradition of land art and arte povera, which put in the contexts of the 21st century might indicate the absurdity of fast life, everyday anxieties, worries and remind us really that death is coming sooner or later, so we better stop and contemplate about the value of material things and inevitable mortality of ourselves. 

In the traditional technique of lithography, Kosta Đorđević is presenting a half-abstract, stone-like object. He uses the neutral form of the object to experiment with possibilities of expression in this technique, widely used in the 20th century by many painters precisely because of its painterly qualities. Kosta Đorđević mainly inquires relations between light and shadow, and especially the way they construct solid form in perspective. Also, by the moves, lines and the use of shades, it can be seen that he is mainly (and well) educated in painting and not the printmaking. 

In her drawing Nina Jeftić is examining the possible ways to reinterpret motives from traditional sculpture, be it ancient Hellenistic Nika, or a totemic head. Bodies are stylized so the drawing resembles a cartoon-like sketch. The main character is always a woman, so the artist may want to question and reinterpret the legacy of ancient art in representing female bodies and women as subjects. 

The painting of Una Knežević is apparently a family portrait made after a photograph. Different painting traditions pop to one's mind when looking at it - fauvistic use of color mixed with expressionism in contrasts and faces, Manet’s use of white and its different tones in high contrast to dark colors of clothes, and also influence of modernist painting of Yugoslav artists from the 20th century. Sad and nostalgic, this portrait reminds us of the long lost habit of having family portraits but also taking photos of the family in this representative manner. 

On the untitled artwork of Jasna Konstantin, we can see the artists fascination with the landscape. One of the oldest topics in the painting, but that never stopped being interpreted all over again. In quite an impressionist manner, she is trying to explore the expressive possibilities of painting nature and its phenomena, slipping occasionally into abstraction. 

In the animation Preobražaj (Metamorphosis) Ivana Kucina is interested in questioning identity, and its mutability. She is trying to interrogate the fluidity of identity and directions of its possible change. I think the outcome of her visual research is the conclusion that identities are not fixed, that form, biology or material existence don’t presuppose fixed positions from which one observes, feels and thinks. 

The sketchbook of Jovana Kulezić is full of her colored drawings so well drawn in small details and colored in vivid, resonant colors. Her drawings are usually quite morbid regarding the topic - cut fingers and blood on the ax, grotesque faces, a dog that bites a feeding hand, but still, they have some witty even funny tone. The represented actions, scenarios or beings are often surrealistic but drawn in a realistic, yet stylized manner so they resemble some illustrations of fairytales, but obscure ones.

Andrea Moračanin is presented by her three artworks painted with the dry and oil pastel on paper. She is painting interiors but focusing on the exploration of the relationship between space and form. In her monochromatic pieces color serves to communicate the atmosphere and the vibe of space, not to depict it realistically. The omission of people and details also create a feeling of loneliness and alienation. 

Portraits made by Dunja Ožegović are sarcastic depictions of people that represent some social stereotypes. In the time of constant use of filters that highly beautify ones face, characteristic features of ones face become something to hide. The artist tries to go back to some form of caricature to mock this practice but also to try to relate once again the physical with the psychological. 

Aleksandar Rakezić created an interesting piece - hyperrealistic box of herbal sage tea (Salvia officinalis). His artwork relies on the traditions of American pop art - especially Warhol’s Cambell Soup cans. Here, he might as well allude on the pharmaceutical mafia and the way it creates real social problems for offering „fake” medicine for the sake of capital. 

It seems that the painting of Tomica Radulović comes from the same „school” as one of Una Knezevic. Artistic tradition of Manet’s impressionism and modernist Yugoslav painting is obvious. But the presented theme is rather curious - a woman is looking at her at her own reflection in the water, but we only get to see the eyes in the water. The woman looking down seems like a completely different person from the one in the reflection which may pose the questions of self-awareness and self-representation. 

In a series of works done by Vukašin Raduški feelings of absence and presence are constantly interwind. Trees and plants may or may not be alive, people are not present, space is quite empty, and there are only traces of what used to be somebody’s life once - a suitcase or a piece of clothing. His artworks are melancholic, soft and in a way very silent. 

Ana Tončić is exploring the expressive qualities of the line as a painterly element. Her drawings are focused on how to represent speed, moving, or rapid change. Is the line able to express those abstract concepts with material consequences? Futurists would say yes, and so would Ana Tončić.

The paintings of Katarina Vijatov are rare examples of some kind of abstract expressionism tendencies in the contemporary Serbian painting. Her black abstract (non)forms on white background doubtlessly remind us of American painter Franz Kline and his expressive blacks on white. But the artist here uses more soft, more subtle forms that would place her art rather in lyrical abstraction than expressionist one.

* The exhibition shows that there are no strictly defined tendencies in contemporary Serbian painting. Painting became, even inside of the Academia, an open space for visual research in various media and genres. Young artists that exhibited their artworks in U10 cleary don’t have a common denominator in their artworks - they use different techniques, styles, and materials, they have a fundamentally different understanding of painting, rely on different traditions and they all speak about different subjects. This only means that the painting as a medium is still alive and it’s constantly being redefined by new generations of painters.