Nevena Kostić "The Other Face of Silence"

Nevena Kostić

The Other Face of Silence

Salon 77, August 26 - September 21, 2025

An excerpt from a dozen drawings from the landscape cycle by artist Nevena Kostić forms a new exhibition at Salon 77. Predominantly using the technique of charcoal on paper, which she mixes with watercolor, pastel, ink and collage, the artist assumes systems of expressive lines with small colored accents, painted or glazed passages, but most often with inverse drawing with an eraser. The tension of the scene in some works manifests the aesthetic category of sublimity, which is somewhat limited today, while in others, the sequence of plans in depth leads the observer to meditative reflections. One gets the impression that the works in which these two treatments meet are particularly successful because they seem to support the thesis that beyond tense situations lies a world of peace, completely immune in its ignorance.

Nevena Kostić (Kragujevac, 1988) completed her undergraduate and master's studies in mural painting at the Department of Applied Arts of the Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kragujevac, in the class of Professor Zoran Ivanovic. She has participated in the work of numerous domestic and international art colonies. She has exhibited in a large number of collective exhibitions, and has realized seven solo exhibitions. She has won four awards for drawing and mosaic. She has been a member of ULUS since 2015.

The exhibition "The Other Face of Silence" can be visited by the public until September 21 at Salon 77.

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"Word and/or Image, Ethics and/or Aesthetics" by Irena Vuković

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"Center" by Andrea Moračan

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Mila Guardiola ''INTERACTIONS''

On Tuesday, April 15, starting at 7 p.m., Salon 77 will host the opening of a solo exhibition by Mila Gvardiol, an artist from Belgrade. The exhibition features paintings from her latest production, which belong to the "Interactions" cycle.

​Mila Gvardiol (Belgrade, 1979) graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts (2004) and received her doctorate from the Interdisciplinary Studies Department of the University of Arts in Belgrade (2012). She is an associate professor and dean at the Faculty of Digital Production in Sremska Kamenica. She taught at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade from 2015 to 2023. She has held more than 40 solo exhibitions in many cities in Serbia and Croatia. She has exhibited at over 200 collective exhibitions in the country and abroad. She has won 15 awards, including the ULUPUDS Annual Award (2018).

The thoughtful and intellectualized transformation of the scene from the macrocosm into the language of geometric forms and lines with a sensitive coloristic choice is the basis of Mila Guardiola's painting manuscript, while the original motif inspiration is recognized in the architecture of urban environments. The artist sublimates fragments of architecture to the level of basic geometric bodies and forms, neglecting the primary function of architecture and creating works that are abstract in terms of visuality and semantic ambiguity with emotional, psychological, or existential connotations.

​Mila Guardiola's latest paintings from the "Interactions" series are dominated by massive cubes that resemble apartment buildings, but they are offset from their axis, slanted, disturbingly tilted, prone to falling. The artist mainly presents them from a lower angle, so that their tops are concentrated around a central whiteness as a light source, or the light source is displaced outside the canvas and illuminates the scene in the form of a prismatic beam. By varying the compositional approach, the way of treating light, and the color scheme (from darker, monochrome to lighter pastel), the artist artistically defines different states of interaction, which results in a variety of general impressions that range from the extreme drama of a high energy charge to the tranquility of the coexistence of subdued energy.

The exhibition of Mila Guardiola in Niš will last until May 6th.

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SELMA ĐULIZAREVIĆ EXHIBITION

SELMA ĐULIZAREVIĆ EXHIBITION

Selma Đulezarević – Karanović was born in Sarajevo in 1967. She studied at the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. She graduated from the Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, in the class of Professor Milica Stevanović. She also completed her postgraduate studies at the same faculty in 1997. She earned a Doctor of Arts degree in painting under the mentorship of Professor Anđelka Bojović in 2012. She has been a member of ULUS since 1995. She currently works at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade as a full professor. She has had 34 solo exhibitions in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Belgium. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the country and abroad. Her works are in the collection of the Belgrade City Museum, the Nadežda Petrović Gallery in Čačak, the Contemporary Gallery in Subotica and the Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.

In 2010, Selma Đulezarević Karanović participated in the Symposium of the International Organisation of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians in Istanbul, entitled Cultural Exchange Between East and West: Kaftan and Its Influence in Fashion. In the same year, she became a member of this organisation. The thematic framework of this symposium had a stimulating influence on her artistic work. Although she is a painter by vocation, she began researching the kaftan, a traditional shirt of the peoples and nationalities from the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Since the author herself comes from Bosnia and Herzegovina, more precisely from Sarajevo, she places emphasis on the urban costume, noticing various depictions and ornaments on the shirts of women of Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths. One thing was common to all of them, and that was the beauty in the execution of various embroideries and weavings, as well as the dominant floral motif (rose, jasmine, tulip, lily of the valley,..). The importance of folk handicrafts, the richness of weaving in cotton, hemp and silk as well as embroidered decorations on clothing items, shirts, dresses, towels are sublimated in the new opus of Selma Đulezarević Karanović. Following the basic formal principles and patterns in the original embroidery, the artist paints and draws with textile paint floral decorations, song lyrics and messages. Collages made by combining different pieces of textiles have a special charm. This encounter of antiquity with objects of modern clothing creates new horizons not only of the aesthetic but also of the mental concept of a personal nature. The artist uses the white shirt from the folk costume as a metaphor for the permanent and the imperishable, as a symbol of the unbreakable bond of every woman with her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, generations ago. As the artist herself says, with these works she makes a special kind of gratitude to our ancestors from whom we inherited a sense of beauty. We can freely say that our grandmothers turned manual labor from an everyday necessity into an individual pleasure and a means of expression. Women in domestic conditions, excluded from any socio-political influence and public life of that time, through this type of activity become the forerunners of today's emancipated women. Through various status or romantic messages ("Beauty is within us", "Housewives, talk less so your lunch doesn't burn", "Dew fell on the meadow, I gave my beloved my hand"...) Selma parries the traditional and contemporary position of a business woman, exposed to new global challenges. She has written the verses of Vera Nedić on her wedding towels, her shirts are called "Covid Depression", and her corsets are written with the names of antidepressants. Dresses, collages and other objects make the ambient installation entitled "Heritage-Burden" complex and multi-layered. Going through each segment of the aforementioned works, the artist gives us the opportunity to experience the past and heritage through the prism of the aesthetic, philosophical, material and immaterial segments of our individual and collective heritage, questioning our willingness to accept its weight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_uPe1z9XnA

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"Liberation" by Maša Paunović

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Sofia Vojinović "Daydreams"

Sofija Vojinović ''Dreaming''
SALON 77

Sofija Vojinović, born in 1991 in Čačak. She completed her master's and basic academic studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Department of Painting. She is a member of ULUS.
She has participated in several group exhibitions and has realized four solo exhibitions in Užice, Belgrade, Čačak and Kragujevac. Since 2018, she has been starting her exhibition career with drawings in which she explores the shadow. This project has resulted in the cycles Presupposition, Home in the Home, Shadows of Home and the latest Dreaming.

The shadow in Jung's psychology of personality has a deep meaning and the term shadow refers to a part of identity that the conscious self does not understand or accept. Psychic traits that the human ego does not recognize as its own are instead repressed into the unconscious, where an inferior, dark part of the personality called the shadow is formed. What is even more interesting is that the shadow is an inexhaustible source of creativity and often superb art. Shadows are also mentioned in fairy tales and children's stories, let's remember Peter Pan, the eternal boy who chases his mischievous shadow. The shadow can appear in visions, memories and dreams. That is why the artist turned her shadows into memories that, although faded, have remained permanently recorded in special folders and memory cards. A shadow on the wall, a shadow on the floor, a shadow from a window with outlined traces of a curtain through which, as the wind blows, patterns are created on the wall, outlines of silhouettes, geometric and amorphous forms like the shadows of a home. This interweaving represents the memory of childhood, events from the past, beautiful unforgettable moments experienced in youth, in life, but also repressed difficult, emotional moments that occasionally surface.
The latest cycle of Daydreaming builds on previous cycles, shadows revive memories, and new fragments remain framed within the drawing, frozen in time. Daydreaming is a characteristic of artists, poets, inventors, philosophers. Many scientific achievements, imaginary landscapes of visual artists, beautiful symphonies of composers can arise from daydreaming. They have the power to materialize their daydreaming and transform it into a painting, music, or song.
Shadows on walls, drawings, and canvases by Sofija Vojinović represent geometric compositions with a pronounced perspective, painted in gray layers of transparent paint with visible overlapping of crossed lines and surfaces. Discreetly presented combinations of vertical and horizontal surfaces, bordered by a shadow through which light passes, create a certain contrast that is very important in fine art. This contrast enhances the excitement of the composition. However, the artist places special emphasis on the shadow, which is dominant in the entire composition. Judge for yourself whether visualization is the only important thing or the artist is just playing around in order to draw our attention to listening to our Self a little better, and accepting it as it is without any restraints or complexes.

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Spreads # ...

JELENA JOCIC EXHIBITION: "PROSTIRANJA"

"SALON 77" /July 16 - August 7/

She was born in Belgrade in 1970. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1997, at the Department of Graphics, received her master's degree in 2000, and received her doctorate and 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 a recipient of a scholarship from the Republic Foundation for the Development of Scientific and Artistic Youth of Serbia. In the period from 1998 to 2002, as part of a project for talented individuals, she worked at the Department of Graphics at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade.

Since 2003, she has been working as a professor of professional studies at the Academy of Professional Studies Polytechnic, at the Department of Design. So far, she has had several solo exhibitions and over two hundred group exhibitions in the country and abroad. She has exhibited in New York, Paris, Luxembourg, Liege, Quebec, Thessaloniki, São Paulo, Seoul, Madrid, Budapest, Istanbul, Stockholm, Skopje and at many international graphic arts biennials and triennials. 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 significant awards in the field of graphics are:

The Graphic Collective Mali Pechat Award in 2010 and the Veliki Pechat Award in 2021. The work "Bridges" is in the collection of the Belgrade City Museum. Her works are included in the Purchase of Works of Art of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia (2005, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018). She has been a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS) since 1998, and on the board of directors of ULUS from 2022-2023. She has been a member of the Artistic Council and the board of directors of the Grafički kolektiv Gallery in Belgrade since 2011. She was elected as the president of the board of directors of the GK at the GK assembly held on 06.07.2023.

Jelena Jocić continues her artistic research, relating to the existing interiors of large industrial centers, finding in them the idea for defining an ideal space. By merging the visual and the perceptual into one whole, he develops a unique artistic language in whose context visions of an ideal space can be glimpsed. Through his own photographic observation, he singles out the dominant motif of empty, devastated industrial complexes, approaching the framing process that hints at transience, alienation and loneliness. Continuing the process of creation, in addition to nurturing visual relationships, the network of crossed lines and collage pop art pieces also includes a certain number of artifacts.

Through the play of light and geometric surfaces, as well as the assembly procedures used by constructivist artists, he explores the boundaries of personal and private space.

The architectural specificity of the interior, which associates with metal structures, served as a metaphor for the boundary that separates the artist from the existing environment, entering new timeless dimensions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb39KY7LJdE

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Inner sense

Photo exhibition "Inner Sense" by Paulina Aleksić and Sara Popović.

The exhibition "Inner Sense" consists mainly of interpretations of landscapes in the technique of black and white photography. Two significantly different authorial manuscripts by Paulina Aleksić and Sara Popović will offer the audience two positions of opinion on the media and the work.

Artistically sensitive and motifically curious, Paulina Aleksić precisely organizes the frame. Specific and everyday scenes are the subject of balanced conclusions, hunches and questions. Professor Miljan Nedeljković notes how these works delve into collective memory, which the audience intuitively recognizes.

The largest number of Sara Popović's photographs were taken "handheld" and in motion. Sara manipulates nebulae, blur and light with the first line of research, while there is also an enviable group of works with emphasized graphism. By completely ignoring the factual nature of the photographic medium, the artist approaches the expression inherent in traditional art forms or, on the other hand, the aesthetics of new wave film.

Miljan Nedeljković concludes that “The works of the two young authors suggest a return to the idea that life is a constant movement and a sum of what has been experienced, which as such, multiplied by the experiences of generations, build a mosaic of history and the future.”

Paulina Aleksić (Zaječar, 1999) graduated in 2021 from the Faculty of Arts in Niš, Department of Applied Arts, Graphic Design, and completed her master’s studies in 2022 at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, Department of Photography. She has participated in numerous exhibitions organized by the artistic student group “PETA 128” and has exhibited her works at various festivals and events.

Sara Popović (Niš, 1997) completed her undergraduate and master's studies in 2022 at the Faculty of Arts in Niš, Department of Applied Arts, Graphic Design. During her studies, she participated in collective exhibitions in the field of graphic design and photography in the country and abroad, as well as in exhibitions organized with the independent art group "PETA 128". Since 2019, she has been actively volunteering as a photographer at the international jazz festival "Nišville". In 2022, the branch of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences Niš published a video work and multimedia entitled "Testimony of Humanity" (P. Donkov, M. Nedeljković, S. Popović).

The first joint exhibition of Paulina Aleksić and Sara Popović "The Inner Sense" was realized in 2023 at the "Čedomir Krstić" Gallery in Pirot, Radul-beg's Residence in Zaječar, the Hajduk Veljko Museum in Negotin and the Gallery of the National Museum in Vranje.

The exhibition "The Inner Sense" can be visited by the public until July 9.

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Jeff Sipel and Nebojša Lazić "Meeting Place"

We invite you to the opening of the exhibition of prints by Jeff Sippel and Nebojša Lazić entitled "Meeting Place"

Tuesday, June 4, 2024 at 7 p.m.

Salon 77

Jeff Sippel and Nebojša Lazić are long-time friends and colleagues who have been nurturing a friendship and artistic collaboration for more than thirty years, which began in the 1990s at the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico, United States. The collaboration has been maintained over the past years, through socializing, exchanging ideas in the field of fine graphics, and through the joint work of two artists from different continents. This exhibition, entitled "Meeting Place", continued in Serbia, first at the Small Art Salon in Novi Sad, then at the Sićevo Print Workshop and finally with this exhibition at Salon 77.

Jeffrey Sippel is an international artist and American printmaker. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 1976 and studied at the Tamarind Institute from 1977 to 1979. After graduating from the Tamarind Institute, he received a certificate as a master printer. Later, he received an MFA from the Arizona State Institute. Sippel taught at Druchaus EA Kuensen, worked as the head printer at Ocean Works LEL and taught at Ohio State University. Sippel currently teaches at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Specializing in waterless lithography, his work is included in many renowned collections, including the Siminsonian Institute. In addition, Sipel's many exhibitions include lectures in the Soviet Union, Finland, South Africa, Chile, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere in the United States. Sipel has exhibited his work in over 200 exhibitions throughout the United States and around the world.

He uses floral motifs, abstracting them in shape and form. He works on paper, mylar, or canvas, combining many different layers of printmaking techniques to achieve the desired effects. He considers his visual explorations to be essential inspiration in his work with students, in collaborations with colleagues, and in his own work. Primarily as a printer, he uses applications, printing cliches, combining different layers that often deviate from the original intention. The fundamental elements contribute not only to the visual but also to the analytical aspect and emotional response.

Nebojša Lazić graduated (1992), received his master's degree (1996) and doctorate (2015) from the Department of Graphics at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. During his two-year specialist studies at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography in New Mexico, USA, he earned the title of Associate Printer for Graphics. He has received several awards, scholarships and recognitions for his contribution to fine and graphic arts in the country and abroad. So far, he has organized twenty-three solo and nine author's exhibitions in the country and abroad. He has been a regular member of ULUS since 1993. During his decade-long stay in New York (1995-2006), Lazić founded a professional lithographic studio in which he collaborated as a collaborative printmaker with Rutgers University in New Jersey, the art studio of Donald Bechler, Stefan Dean, Anna De la Porte, Ray Smith, Sinclair Semin... In the professional graphic studio Lower East Side, he demonstrated lithographic techniques. Since 2014, he has been working at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad as a professional associate in the subject of drawing, and from 2007 to 2014, he worked in the same position at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. He currently holds the title of assistant professor at the Department of Drawing at the Faculty of Arts in Novi Sad and at the Department of Graphics at the Academy of Classical Painting at the EDUKONS University in Sremska Kamenica. Lazić is the founder of the Center for Graphics in Novi Sad in 2008, where, through a series of projects in collaboration with domestic and foreign artists, he organized many author exhibitions in Novi Sad, Pym, New York and Munich. He is a participant in numerous professional symposia in the country and abroad. When it comes to his work, he transferred his visual research in the field of lithography to painting. He builds abstract images in layers, by spilling paint on canvas, with expressive gestures. He consciously creates situations of chaos where "the painting paints itself", organizing the achieved randomness into an artistic whole.

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