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EXHIBITION OF JELENE JOCIĆ
"SALON 77" /16. July - August 7/
She was born in Belgrade in 1970. Graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1997 at the Department of Graphics, received her Master's degree in 2000, received her doctorate and earned the title of Doctor of Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts within the University of Arts in Belgrade in 2017. During her undergraduate studies, she was awarded a scholarship by the Republic Foundation for the Development of Scientific and Artistic Youth of Serbia. In the period from 1998 to 2002, as part of the project for talented people, she worked at the Department of Graphics at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade.
Since 2003, he has been working as a professor of vocational studies at the Polytechnic Academy of Vocational Studies, at the Department of Design. Until now, she has had several solo exhibitions and over two hundred group exhibitions in the country and abroad. She exhibited in New York, Paris, Luxembourg, Liège, Quebec, Thessaloniki, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Madrid, Budapest, Istanbul, Stockholm, Skopje and at many international biennials and triennials of graphics. She is the winner of several awards in the field of graphic art (Petar Lubarda, Đorđe Andrejević - Kun, 8th and 9th Biennial of Yugoslav Student Graphics).
The most important awards in the field of graphics are:
The Small Seal Award of the Graphic Collective in 2010 and the Large Seal Award in 2021. The work "Bridges" is in the collection of the Museum of the City of Belgrade. Her works were included in the Acquisition of Works of Art of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia (2005, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018). He has been a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS) since 1998, and a member of the board of directors of ULUS since 2022-2023. year. He has been a member of the Art Council and the Board of Directors of the Graphic Collective Gallery in Belgrade since 2011. She was elected as the president of the Board of Directors of the Central Committee at the General Committee meeting held on July 6, 2023.
Jelena Jocić continues her artistic research by connecting to the found interiors of large industrial centers, finding in them the idea for defining an ideal space. Combining the visual and the perceptual into one whole, he develops a unique artistic language in the context of which visions of an ideal space can be seen. Through his own photographic observation, he singles out the dominant motif of empty, desolate industrial complexes, approaching the framing process, which hints at transience, alienation and loneliness. Continuing the process of making in addition to nurturing and visual relationships, the tangle of crossed lines and collaged pop art pieces also includes a number of artefacts.
Through the games of light and geometric surfaces as well as assembly procedures applied by constructivist artists, he explores the boundaries of personal and private space.
The architectural definiteness of the interior, which is associated with metal structures, served as a metaphor for the border that separates the artist from the found environment, entering into new timeless dimensions.
MILORAD BATA MIHAILOVIĆ - THE FIRST PARIS DECADE
Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Nis invites you to the ceremonial opening of the exhibition of the works of the painter and academician Milorad Bata Mihailović (1923-2011) on Thursday, May 30 at 8 p.m. - Pavilion in the Fortress. The exhibition entitled The First Paris Decade of Milorad Bata Mihailović, authored by Sofija Ž. Milenković, SLU Gallery organizes in cooperation with the Rima Gallery and the Milorad Bata Mihajilović Foundation, and on the occasion of the great jubilee, the centenary of the birth of the prominent artist.
The exhibition will feature some of the most significant works of Mihailović's first decade in Paris, including newly discovered works, which will be presented to the domestic public for the first time in Niš.
Milorad Bata Mihailović was born in Pančevo in 1923. He began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1946, and after staying in Zadar and working as part of an informal group of students known as the Zadar Group, he left them two years later and continued working independently. In the very early period, the figure predominates in Mihailović's paintings, most often through the genre of portraits, self-portraits and group portraits, as well as urban landscapes, among which Belgrade views stand out. Later, staying on the coast, after leaving the Academy, under various influences the artist developed his own artistic expression, adopting a two-dimensional and modernist approach to painting.
From 1951, he was a member and founder of the group Jedenaestorica. In the same year in Belgrade, he held his first solo exhibition at the ULUS Gallery, which met with the approval of art critics, with the observation that Mihailović, although clearly talented, had not yet found his authentic artistic expression.
With his wife, the painter Ljubica Jovanović, he went to Paris in 1952, where he spent most of his life, with occasional returns to Belgrade.
Entering the new, developed art scene, in the very center of European art events, the artist encountered multifaceted currents of abstract painting that were unknown to him until then. Painting at first moderately geometrized abstract forms, Mihailović's expressive painting temperament was more suited to freer lyrical expression in Paris. He organized his first solo exhibitions as early as 1953 in the Marseille gallery and the Paul Morihien bookstore, and his notable performances led him to the acquaintance and cooperation with the distinguished gallerist Rudi Augustinčić and the Rive Gauche gallery, where he exhibited for the first time with the Polish artist Marjan in 1957, and then in 1959 with the Dutch painter Bram Bogart. Decisive for Mihailović's positioning on the local art scene was the collaboration with Jean Polak, owner of the prestigious Ariel gallery, where Mihailović has been exhibiting independently since 1960.
He stayed in New York on several occasions from 1962 until his final return to the art scene of Yugoslavia in 1965. The first retrospective exhibition in Belgrade was organized in 1981 in the Art Pavilion of Cvijeta Zuzorić.
Milorad Bata Mihailović was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His works are represented in the collections of renowned museums and institutions, private collections, social institutions in the country and abroad.
The public in Niš will have the opportunity to visit the exhibition in the Pavilion in the Fortress until June 30.
Bojan Otasevic
On Thursday, May 9, a solo exhibition of Dr. Bojan Otašević, full professor at the Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kragujevac, was opened in the Pavilion in Tvrđava. The exhibition consists of large-format graphics from the "Waiting Room" cycle, created in the last ten years and realized in the algraphy technique with multiple colored passes.
Bojan Otašević has been developing an authentic oeuvre that is compact in its uniqueness and consistency for more than twenty years. From the very beginning, he opted for the world of figuration, that is, for a traditional genre repertoire that is predominantly based on portraits and human figures. However, Otašević uses the motifs that have been the basis of artistic expression since time immemorial as a means of speaking about the current social moment. His lonely figures with lowered shoulders and averted gaze, most often nudes, are a symbiosis of the state of alienation and confusion of a modern man caught in the labyrinth of existing events, which are such that they inevitably cause existential and emotional concern over one's own destiny. The artist presents the figure in close-up, often in a sitting position, without movement, but behind that physical staticness hides an eruptive inner energy, a swirl of thoughts and feelings, which Otašević achieves with a skillful combination of artistic elements based on the force of gestures, the light-dark relationship and counterpoint. gorgeous color spectrum. Calling his latest cycle of prints "Waiting Room" from nameless individual portraits and figures, Otašević creates a kind of group portrait of people from the social margins who are waiting for better times and are potential bearers of necessary changes.
Bojan Otašević was born in Kragujevac in 1973. He graduated, master's and doctorate at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. He organized fifty independent exhibitions in many cities of Serbia and in Canada, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. He is the winner of 23 awards, among which are significant national recognitions for graphics: the ULUS Golden Pin award (2002), the Small Seal (2015) and the Large Seal of the Graphic Collective (2018), as well as awards at international events: the Bronze Pin at the 12th International Biennale "Dry Needle" in Užice, Grand Diploma at the 12th International Biennale of Portraits in Tuzla and Special Recognition for Contribution to Graphics in the World at the Triennial of Graphics in Bitola.
The exhibition will last until May 26
DRAGAN MOMCILOVIĆ
RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION
DRAGAN MOMCILOVIĆ
On April 25, 2024, the Niš Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art is organizing a retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings by Dragan Momčilović. With this exhibition of selected works from the field of fine art, the artist celebrates 50 years of his artistic work. The exhibition will be officially opened by Goran Stanković, a Serbian writer of poetry, prose, and essays. In addition to the above, he is engaged in editorial work, as a long-time editor in Gradina, then director of the Niš Cultural Center. Since 2002, he has been the chief editor in the same institution. Winner of many awards in the field of literature. First of all, Goran Stanković is a long-time friend and collaborator of Dragan Momčilović. At the opening itself, we will have the opportunity to enjoy the performance of several musical numbers performed by a string quartet from the Leskovac Symphony Orchestra.
Momčilović was born in 1952 in Crna Trava, from where the family moved to Ćičevac, where he finished elementary school, and then entered the five-year Art School "Đorđe Krstić" in Niš. On the recommendation of professor Dragan Kostić, after finishing art school, he started working at the then young and promising publishing house "Gradina", where he established a sign and symbolic recognition, and furnished over 1000 titles. At the end of the seventies, he enrolled in the "Kliment of Ohrid" Pedagogical Academy, became a member of ULUPUDS and ULUS. Even though he was working on book editing, as a technical editor, actually at that time the painterly being was developing in him, inspired by poetry, literary works, above all the poems of Branko Miljković. Fascinated by lyricism and spirituality, he creates his artistic language by building it very thoroughly and systematically. His paintings become epitaphs dedicated to deceased writers or dialogues with contemporaries of the painting profession. Series of diverse works followed year after year in countless combinations of paintings, drawings, objects. Entire cycles of thoroughly elaborated works of art were created: Epitaph, Horizon, The Blue Line of Life, Seven Dead Poets, About Branko Miljković, Dialogue with Todor (Stevanović), Through Painting and Object... In addition to the above, Momčilović has been constantly exploring nature and everything for decades. what surrounds him, but above all by his experience, his memory. Carried away by personal philosophical thinking, imaginary landscapes filled with symbols, abstract pasty surfaces, endless embodiment of the horizon, from which the sun rises and sets as a symbol of life and its spirit, were created.
His palette is recognizable, distinctive, individual, as well as the way of painting and combining abstract, symbolic and geometric expression through colored drawing. Momčilović's versatility in the fine and applied arts of the past five decades will remain permanently recorded, through a large number of awards and recognitions from many fairs and individual and collective exhibitions of members of ULUS and ULUPUDS. We must especially highlight his personal engagement in creating the culture of the city, and his great merits for the formation of the Art Colony "Classic" of the Niš Tobacco Factory (Philip Morris), where he worked from 1993 to 2005. After retiring, he devotes himself completely to painting and working in the studio with the same intensity, creating everyday surrounded by friends and family. With this retrospective exhibition, he marks 50 years of his artistic work, with works carefully selected from his rich oeuvre. Despite the changes he went through, he remained consistent with his chosen creative direction and artistic expression, which is clear and very recognizable. Looking at all phases of his work, starting from the figurative, until the last abstract, he remained consistent with the enformal and associative illusion of the subject form with noticeable traces of artistic abstraction. The maturity and experience gained through daily work and involvement is now here in front of us and he has proven it with his actions. Fragmentation and layering as well as boundless expressive energy fit with the artist's temperament, which is of the same intensity as at the beginning of his creative journey. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog and an almanac with the painter's artistic manifesto. Dragan Momčilović still wants to say a lot and record it permanently on the painting canvas, and we thank him for that from the bottom of our hearts and wish him to continue creating as long as possible.
The exhibition will last until May 25, 2024.