Description
The recent history of Serbia is tragic in many ways, but it has created an environment in which a number of artists - not interested in the fashion of the day and, for the most part, isolated from the dictates of the art market - struggle to make sense of the largely insane circumstances they were caught in and create images inspired by profound suffering, empathy, isolation, and transience, as well as by the deeply felt threat posed by greediness, corruption, and stupidity, all aspects of human nature and the world in which we live. Experience of a personal - screen-less - connection with life and other human beings, and with the physical and metaphysical aspects of living, is what emerges in their art. Their images are inspired by a deep-seated sense of curiosity and a need for self-exploration, a need to make sense of the world around them. Their art does not transport us into the fantasy world of self-forgetting, but inspires remembering who we are as human beings, with all our strengths and weaknesses, and it illuminates, at least briefly, the nature of life with its blessings and faults. This book presents a small selection of contemporary Serbian artists who have witnessed a fundamental transition from one social context to another, a transformation that happened dramatically and swiftly in Yugoslavia - the country that Serbia was a part of - in the early 1990s, and that unfolded into what many feel is the national disaster Serbia experiences today. All the selected works were made since 1992, created in the traditional techniques of painting, drawing, and printmaking. A few works are executed in a mixed media technique, but they all include painting and are intended to be perceived as paintings.The themes addressed by the artists in this book range from meditating on the creation of the world, the universe, and life, to reflecting on the paradoxes of human life, and thinking about the nature of human connections to the environment, the past, and one another.
