LATEST NEWS
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.
Milan Kujundzic
Milan Kujundzic
objects, installations and video
Salon 77, April 11 - May 1, 2024
Expressing himself in different media (installation, object, video, drawing and sound), Milan Kujundžić deals with the relationship between the individual and the collective, i.e. questioning the position of the individual within the wider and narrower global system. He is interested in the question of man's susceptibility to living in a complex social structure, with a large number of predefined rules for living and acting. Looking for border points when the statement acquires a tone of protest and calls for resistance to the order, Kujundžić, with his recent works, reflects on the need for the liberalization of social dogmas and the re-examination of newly created imperatives. "To the fight to save humanity" the artist adds a variety of stripped-down remarks from global reality. Conducted in the spirit of rebellious art of the last century, and anticipating the current phenomena of reality, the works of this exhibition represent Kujundžić's contribution to public consciousness.
Milan Kujundžić was born in 1997 in Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He completed his basic painting studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Trebinje in 2019. He won an award for painting at the same academy and was awarded a special award at the International Student Biennial in Osijek in 2021. He completed his master's studies at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, module New Visual Media. It exhibited at several collective exhibitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia. He exhibited independently in Foča, Trebinje, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, Belgrade and Užice. He participated in numerous colonies, festivals and art workshops in the region and abroad, some of the more important ones being the film workshop "ACTive" in Skopje and Ulcinj and the film workshop "Fighting stigma through film" in London. He is a finalist of the "Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos" award for young visual artists in Serbia in 2022.
He participated in guiding through the exhibition "EUROVISION. CROSSING STORIES AND SPACE" in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina. He is a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Vojvodina.
The public can visit the exhibition of objects, installations and video works by Milan Kujundžić until May 12 in Salon 77.
Milan Stanojev
Exhibition Milan Stanojev: in the passage of time,
On Tuesday, March 26, at 7 p.m., an exhibition of paintings and graphics by Novi Sad artist Milan Stanojev, titled Milan Stanojev: in the passage of time, was opened in the Pavilion in Tvrđava.
This year marks the end of six decades of professional creativity of the author, one of the most responsible for mapping Novi Sad as a prestigious graphic center in Yugoslavia, professor of the Academy of Arts, participant of numerous exhibitions in the country and abroad, member of ULUS and Graphic Collective, winner of numerous awards and recognitions, among which stands out the Great Seal of the Graphic Collective, awarded in May 1976 for the graphic of Pear on the Table, made in the aquatint technique.
According to the author of the exhibition, Jasna Kujundžić Jovanov, an art historian and art critic, judging the creativity of Milan Stanojev, who continues to create every day, always carries the risk of being missed, and it is difficult to see the extensive work, which numbers thousands of works and whose visual codes flow in parallel. they intertwine, hint at each other. The overriding impression of symbolic-metaphorical frames, during certain periods, changes its appearance: Milan Stanojev continuously conducts a dialogue with himself, and communication occasionally flows in a direct form, showing the image of the moment, and far more often in the form of a kind of visual sign that expresses his thoughts.
The exhibition in the Pavilion in Tvrđava is the second presentation of Milan Stanojev in Niš, after the solo exhibition of graphics organized in Salon 77 in 1983, and is an opportunity to broaden the professional public of Southeast Serbia. As an author of graphics, he showed various interests: in the early period, his attention was focused on themes of associative-abstract content current in graphics and in contemporary painting, which is characterized by coloring and the gradual introduction of figurative accents and records, according to the author. From the end of the seventh decade, his graphics are characterized by different types of figuration, realized in different techniques, from aquatint, through lithography, which provides him with the conditions for introducing color, to the combination of aquatint and reserver, which enables refined tonal transitions within the black and white range. The thematic situations in which the human figure and the products of man's work and existence are present are characterized by narrative, irony, grotesque, metaphorical-symbolic tone, Apollonian-Dionysian conflict. From pop art "realism" in the early years of his work, Milan Stanojev reached the grotesque and social criticism in the final phase of graphic design at the end of the last century. Over the years, he experimented with the possibilities of the graphic board, performed technological feats on the subjects of "small things" (fruit, everyday objects such as curtains, laundry baskets, pillowcases, etc.), showed the poetic values of landscapes, explored light and shadow in nature and on urban fragments, in order to bring nature back into the associative domain at one point. At the same time, he expressed himself as a draftsman, challenging the viewer to wonder if drawing always preceded graphics, or if the process was reversed.
Although it seems incompatible, it is similar to painting, which represents a significant segment, and since the beginning of this century, the predominant technique in Milan Stanojev's work, the author notes. His paintings of monumental format evoke different stages of graphic work, but at the same time live a completely new and different life, often entering the domain of abstraction. Although current for more than two decades, this part of Milan Stanojev's creativity is still waiting for the right interpretation, which, Jasna Jovanov points out, will perhaps be initiated by this exhibition organized by the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Nis, which the public will be able to visit until April 15.
EXISTENTIAL ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORAL PRACTICE
EXISTENTIAL ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORAL PRACTICE
a selection from the Fund of sculptures from the collection of the SLU Niš Gallery
On Thursday, March 7, 2024, at 7 p.m., the exhibition "Existential questions in contemporary sculptural practice" will be officially opened in the International Art Studio "Radovan Tranavac Mića". The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art from Niš, as part of the program marking the Day of the City of Valjevo. The author of the exhibition is the museum advisor Milica Todorović.
The exhibition consists of the works of ten sculptors, whose works are part of the Contemporary Sculpture Collection in the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Nis, which is predominantly based on the works of artists from Serbia, but also authors from all the former Yugoslav republics. In front of the audience are the sculptures of Zlatko Glamočak, Mirko Marić, Rajko Popivoda, Zdravko Joksimović, Dragan Jelenković, Marko Crnobrnja, Mrđan Bajić, Gabriel Glid, Radoš Antonijević and Rado Mutapović. The Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Nis has enriched its collection with exhibited works thanks to the participation of the aforementioned authors in the work of the "Sićevo" Art Colony, or purchases from their individual and collective exhibitions realized in Nis.
Ten artists, whose works make up the exhibition, treat completely different phenomena of reality in a symbolic and metaphorical way, through narratives whose sources belong to the fields of human psychology, ethics or are from the domain of ecology, social and social politics.
"On the occasion of the presentation in Valjevo, a selection of ten sculptures created during the last twenty years was made. The exhibition is conceptually designed to emphasize two characteristics typical of recent sculptural practice. The first is of an artistic-visual character and implies the phenomenon of breaking through and expanding the established notion of sculptural, which is accompanied by the process of relativizing definitions of sculpture. The second change is of a content-cognitive nature, and it manifests itself primarily in the domain of expanding the thematic repertoire of sculptural works with those themes that contain a clear allusion to the existential questions of the life of a man caught in the labyrinth of existing social circumstances. We must emphasize that the process of shaking the "certainty" of modernism, which was content with so-called neutral themes and mostly artistic research, began with the appearance of a new generation of sculptors, mostly from the Belgrade art scene, at the end of the eighties of the 20th century, but it experienced its serious momentum only in this century, i.e. the last about twenty years. It is precisely the awareness of contemporary humanistic and ethical issues that is the common denominator of the works that make up the exhibition in Valjevo, pointing us to the existence of different aspects of artistic engagement", says the author of the exhibition, Milica Todorović.
The exhibition will be open until April 1, 2024.
Peking Opera Biennial Posters
EXISTENTIAL ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORAL PRACTICE
a selection from the Fund of sculptures from the collection of the SLU Niš Gallery
On Thursday, March 7, 2024, at 7 p.m., the exhibition "Existential questions in contemporary sculptural practice" will be officially opened in the International Art Studio "Radovan Tranavac Mića". The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art from Niš, as part of the program marking the Day of the City of Valjevo. The author of the exhibition is the museum advisor Milica Todorović.
The exhibition consists of the works of ten sculptors, whose works are part of the Contemporary Sculpture Collection in the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Nis, which is predominantly based on the works of artists from Serbia, but also authors from all the former Yugoslav republics. In front of the audience are the sculptures of Zlatko Glamočak, Mirko Marić, Rajko Popivoda, Zdravko Joksimović, Dragan Jelenković, Marko Crnobrnja, Mrđan Bajić, Gabriel Glid, Radoš Antonijević and Rado Mutapović. The Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Nis has enriched its collection with exhibited works thanks to the participation of the aforementioned authors in the work of the "Sićevo" Art Colony, or purchases from their individual and collective exhibitions realized in Nis.
Ten artists, whose works make up the exhibition, treat completely different phenomena of reality in a symbolic and metaphorical way, through narratives whose sources belong to the fields of human psychology, ethics or are from the domain of ecology, social and social politics.
"On the occasion of the presentation in Valjevo, a selection of ten sculptures created during the last twenty years was made. The exhibition is conceptually designed to emphasize two characteristics typical of recent sculptural practice. The first is of an artistic-visual character and implies the phenomenon of breaking through and expanding the established notion of sculptural, which is accompanied by the process of relativizing definitions of sculpture. The second change is of a content-cognitive nature, and it manifests itself primarily in the domain of expanding the thematic repertoire of sculptural works with those themes that contain a clear allusion to the existential questions of the life of a man caught in the labyrinth of existing social circumstances. We must emphasize that the process of shaking the "certainty" of modernism, which was content with so- called neutral themes and mostly artistic research, began with the appearance of a new generation of sculptors, mostly from the Belgrade art scene, at the end of the eighties of the 20th century, but it experienced its serious momentum only in this century, i.e. the last about twenty years. It is precisely the awareness of contemporary humanistic and ethical issues that is the common denominator of the works that make up the exhibition in Valjevo, pointing us to the existence of different aspects of artistic engagement", says the author of the exhibition, Milica Todorović.
The exhibition will be open until April 1, 2024.
FINE ARTS OF NIS
FINE ARTISTS OF NIŠ ‒ A SELECTION OF WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF GALLERY SLU NIŠ
The desire and need to study the works of fine artists from Niš in the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Niš was stimulated by a significant anniversary - 150 years since the birth of Nadežda Petrović, a famous painter, art teacher, organizer of cultural events, author of art criticism, a socially engaged woman who collected ethnographic subject and expressed her patriotism as a war photographer and nurse in the Balkan wars and the Great War. She was the progenitor of Serbian modernism, our most significant artist at the beginning of the last century. She founded the First Yugoslav Art Colony in the village of Sićevo near Niš, the forerunner of today's Sićevo Art Colony.
The time in which she and her contemporaries lived and the position of women in society are significantly different from today. The beginning of the twentieth century was a period of intense struggle for women's emancipation in all segments of life and society, and over a hundred years later, although not all over the world, women have the right to vote, can study and work, but our society is still patriarchal. on the way to achieving equal opportunities for all.
In the first decades after the liberation of the country in the Second World War, according to the general social climate, political and material conditions, modest conditions of schooling and training, the position and education at that time, and despite the already won women's rights, there were only a few academically educated authors in the city. The development of culture, the activities of the Association of Fine Artists, the establishment of the Art School and, later, institutions specialized in contemporary creativity, led a greater number of women to pursue the professional practice of fine art, and the end of the twentieth century marks the appearance of new generations of female painters and graphic artists, who are involved in current trends , presenting his work independently or at collective screenings, as part of residency programs and projects.
The personality, creativity and social engagement of Nadežda Petrović were the immediate inspiration for dealing with this topic, with the intention of pointing out the valuable contribution of women who were engaged in art and were active participants in the artistic and cultural life of Niš.
With the establishment of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art in 1970, Niš received an institution that, from the very beginning, in addition to monitoring, popularizing and presenting contemporary national and foreign creativity, was also dedicated to collecting, preserving, studying and protecting works of art. Today, the gallery is a heritage in the artistic, aesthetic and historical sense of a valuable fund of 1778 exhibits classified into five collections.
The collection of works by the artists of Niš, formed thanks to gifts, purchases, the Sićevo Art Colony, the Graphic Workshop and other types of programs, gives an insight into the flows and multi-layered changes of the visual scene of this region and is the subject of curators' activities and studies, until now based mainly on analysis in thematic -motive, i.e. style-media sense.
Part of the Collection consists of the works of artists who live, work and create in the city of Nišava, or who are related to this climate by origin or work history. The collection of the Gallery includes a hundred works by forty female authors of different generations, stylistic orientations and artistic practices, who represent the significant cultural heritage of the city and map Nišlijke as fruitful actors of the cultural life of their environment and the entire country.
From the very beginning, the gallery has tried to follow and support the work of artists of different ages, from the very young, through artistically formed representatives of the middle generation, to already established, prominent protagonists with rich careers, members of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS), winners of awards and significant recognitions for work. Some of them were educated or trained abroad and were active in international frameworks, and a certain number of them are dedicated to pedagogical work at the Faculty of Arts, the Art School or related educational institutions.
As is the case in the Collection of fine artists of Niš and the fund as a whole, their works are dominated by graphics, paintings and drawings, valuable in terms of getting to know the work, following creativity, individual development path and insight into the art scene of the city. Only a few sculptures are represented, with a noticeable absence of interest in research in the field of new media and photography. The collection is enriched with these exhibits mostly thanks to the Sićevo Art Colony and Graphic Workshop, and a certain number are individual gifts or purchases from independent and collective exhibitions.
In order to comprehensively present the work of female authors from Niš, fifty works created between 1973 and 2021 have been selected for this exhibition. These are works exhibited individually, at independent or collective exhibitions, published in catalogs and monographs, but never presented as a whole. Heterogeneous in visual expression, approaches and reflections, in a given chronological framework that includes the period immediately before and since the establishment of the SLU Gallery, as the parent institution that follows the activity of the creators of the city, up to the current moment, these works depict
