LIDIJA UZELAC EXHIBITION: “WHERE I AM”
PAVILION IN THE FORTRESS 24 October – 10 November
As a curious artist who always strives for new, exploratory processes, Lidija Uzelac uses various visual techniques: paintings, drawings, canvas printing, layered collage fitting, installations, creating a fresh, innovative system.
Problematizing different ways of reading through enigmatic structures of action, in one part of her latest project she forms free, geometrized forms emphasizing the power of color and lines that possess a wide range of meanings, while in the other part she records her intimate states through a portrait of a Renaissance woman as a personification of mother, woman or matrix, alluding to the source and meaning of existence. Defining the flow of her own thoughts, memories and emotions, she skillfully combines materials to form narratives that relate to the phenomenon and essence of being.
Different levels of meaning invite deeper reflection on the relationship between image and space, reality and illusion, emphasizing elements of property in the current moment.
By arranging very carefully clean, systematically shaped geometrized surfaces and lines through a focused, intimate approach, she forms a complex visual language that functions in the coordinate system of personal symbolism.
Observing the painting process as a mechanism for reading the complex human nature, she expresses a clear personal stance, opposing the increasingly present loss of individual identity. In the title of the exhibition “WHERE I AM”, the artist seeks to establish contact with the viewer by drawing attention to the paradoxes of the contemporary social moment. In addition to abstract paintings and drawings, an independent entity is represented by a wall installation called: “Alma Mater”, expressing her fascination with the portraits of women of the Renaissance masters, which remained recorded in her memory since the time of her studies in Florence, as an intriguing motif that for her represents a striking level of meaning related to nature, life, love, truth, wisdom, revealing the deeper truths of human existence.
Expressing a penchant for reduced forms, an analytical, layered approach and thoughtful compositional construction, Lidija Uzelac forms her own positions in the complex perception of the world and art.
Lidija Uzelac (1961. Travnik), graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Department of Painting, and then specialized at the Academy of Arts “Brera” in Milan. She completed her master’s degree in the class of prof. Radomir Knežević at the Faculty of Arts in Banja Luka. She has organized 24 solo exhibitions in Pančevo, Pirot, Raška, Plovdiv, Smedrevska Palanka, Niš, Belgrade and over 50 group exhibitions in Serbia and abroad. She teaches at the Faculty of Arts in Niš as a full professor at the Department of Graphic Design in the subject of drawing and painting.
The exhibition will run until November 10.