Nemanja Nikolić
Double Noir, # 9, # 31, #32, #51
chalk and pastel on blackboard
120 cm x 77 cm
2016
Photographs of the whole series of realized drawings are incorporated into a film animation, which thus becomes the only medium that stores the complete memory of this layered work.
With their black background, Double Noir drawings point to the aesthetics of noir films; the black background evokes the film or photographic negative, while by imprinting chalk, like by the action of light, the image is recorded on the dark surface. The drawings of frames are not direct and literal quotations taken from films. Despite the author’s realistic visual expression, his drawing is dominated by a gloomy, nightmarish atmosphere, confusing uncertainty, suspense, accompanied by dramatic contrasts and psychological tension, additionally emphasized by the minimalism of the space and ambient sound. Thematically, the Double Noir narrative develops around the legendary noir protagonist, the actor Humphrey Bogart.
Svetlana Montua, for the catalogue of the 56th October Salon
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-312/12.12.2017.
Inventory No. 1501
Photo: Courtesy the artist
Selected Bibliography:
56th October Salon, The Pleasure of Love. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Nemanja Nikolić (1987, Valjevo, Serbia) graduated in painting and obtained a PhD degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 2019. Since 2010 he has presented his works at solo exhibitions in the country and abroad – Art Gallery of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade; Gallery Dix9 Helene Lachermoise, Paris; Youth Centre, Belgrade; Rima Gallery, Kragujevac; U10 Art Space, Belgrade, etc. – and participated in numerous group exhibitions. Since 2018 he has worked as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. He has won several important awards, such as Drawing Award from the Vladimir Veličković Fund, Award for Mural and Wall Installation from Raiffeisen Bank and 12HUB Gallery and Award for Exceptional Creative Innovation from the Miloš Bajić Fund, A co-founder of the U10 Art Space, lives and works in Belgrade. More info at https://www.nemanjanikolic.com
Zoran Naskovski
Mandala and Cross / Farewell to Arms
installation (video projection, black–and-white, colour, double carousel slide projection / 2 x eighty colour slides, 2 slide projectors, 2 microphones, sound)
variable dimensions
2014
The installation Mandala and Cross / Farewell to Arms is a series of crossed video and drawn-into-space carousel slide projections, which forms a space for a tense relationship between the scenes of empty holsters for weapons, used and discarded, and scenes of details from decorative plates, made in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by the Keramika Company from Bratunac, B&H. The stroboscopic method, based on the source of light that is rhythmically turned on and off, produces an intertwined sequence of the mentioned motifs. On the plates are the motifs of Yugoslav cities, painted in the form of mandalas, made in the early seventies, at the time of specific political turmoil, intensive armament and political shifts.
The installation Mandala and Cross / Farewell to Arms is part of the artist’s years-long project under the same name (Mandala and Cross), based primarily on researching, analysing and archiving of print media in real time. The connection between ornament and crime in this installation is set as a proposal for rethinking the aesthetic-political interaction characteristic of violence generated by ideologies, for rethinking what we recognize as strongly “branded” distortions, which now – through images of humanism and violence – have become an integral part of a universal process of “normalization”, which erases its conflicting origin.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-158/25.5.2016.
Inventory No. 1476
Photo: Courtesy the artist
Selected Bibliography:
Branislav Dimitrijević, “Zoran Naskovski: Mandala i krst / Zbogom oružje”, text for the exhibition, Nov. 25 – Dec. 1, 2014, Centre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD), Belgrade, 2014, https://www.czkd.org/2014/11/follow-up-mandala-i-krst-zbogom-oruzje-zoran-naskovski/, accessed on Mar. 30, 2020
Branislav Dimitrijević, “Zoran Naskovski: Mandala i krst / Zbogom oružje”, BETON – kulturno propagandni komplet, No. 207, Year XIII, Belgrade, Tuesday, May 21, 2019, 4, https://www.elektrobeton.net/strafta/zoran-naskovski-mandala-i-krst-zbogom-oruzje/, accessed on Mar. 30, 2020
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Zoran Naskovski (1960, Izbište, Serbia) obtained his master’s degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade. He works in a wide range of media such as video, film, performance, installation, photography and internet projects. In his critical practices, he deals mainly with the topics of political and economic violence, media manipulations, policies of global circulation of images and migrations, institutional criticism, including critical writing about the Serbian national cultural policy. Naskovski has participated in numerous international exhibitions at important museums and institutions, including Whitney Museum in New York, Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Tate Britain in London, Fridericianum Kassel in Kassel, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin. He participated in the central exhibition of the 52nd Venice Biennale Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense in 2007. He received the Nadežda Petrović Memorial Award in 1996, the Award of the Annual Exhibition of the Centre for Contemporary Art Belgrade in 1997, the Award of the 44th October Salon in 2003 and the 47th October Salon in 2006.
Paula Muhr
Ideal Place
lambda print
50 cm х 75 cm (10 pcs)
edition: 1/5 + 2 a.c.
2003–2005
Ideal Place is a project that deals with a utopian construction of an idyllic state of happiness. It is based on a series of interviews with young people living in different Eastern European countries. The work was exhibited at the 45th October Salon in 2004.
In almost all Eastern European countries, socialism reigned for a long time, and in most texts on utopias, it is presented in as an ideal system. The young people with whom the author spoke live in the post-communist era, in the period of globalization, while their countries are undergoing great political and economic changes, and the memory of the systems from the past remains problematic.
A utopia is always based on the principle of equality of its inhabitants, and individual desires and dreams are suppressed for the sake of the common good. Instead of applying global theories, the author stopped ordinary people on the street and asked them what their personal idea of an ideal place was.
To avoid any immediate social context, people were photographed in nature. They listed their name, age, place and country in which they live, and then described their imagined ideal place in a few sentences. This project compares different projections of utopia based on personal experience and personal wishes of young people from Eastern Europe in the early 2000s.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Gift Contract: III-5-292/26.9.2014.
Inventory No. 1360
Photo: Cultural Centre of Belgrade
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paula Muhr Miklošević (1977, Subotica, Serbia). She graduated in photography at the BK University in Belgrade, and received her master’s degree from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade. She has attended doctoral studies at Humboldt University in Berlin, Art and Visual History Department; a laureate of the FEX Award in Dortmund and Mangelos Award in Belgrade. In the period from 2011 to 2014, she taught at the Department of Visual Studies and Photography at the Brand Academy in Hamburg. Lives and works in Berlin. More information at www.paulamuhr.de
Milorad Mladenović
Untitled (School Chairs)
photo installation
40 cm x 60 cm (12 psc)
2014
The Untitled (School Chairs) series of photographs show a range of chair backs, uniform and different at the same time, used and partially written off from the faculty (school) inventory. The work records the impact of use, human interventions and time on inventory property used for educational purposes.
Milorad Mladenović won the 55th October Salon Award (2014) for the Untitled (School Chairs) Series.
The artist photographed ephemeral objects from the domain of production and consumption of knowledge on which various effects of use are visible, from touching of human bodies (backs) to damage by using or moving. Repairmen’s interventions that extended the duration of the objects can also be noticed. The photographs of the objects from the local environment in which the author plays a role in the production and consumption of knowledge are life-size.
In the Untitled (School Chairs) Series, the chosen elements are specific and there is no attempt to indicate a more definite meaning from them as a whole, but to form a visible wide-frame scheme that can be understood from the context. Also, the work is designed as a possible reflection of any private or public environment. The basic classification may relate to private, work and public space of the artist’s observation.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-168/1.6.2016.
Inventory No. 1424
Photo: Courtesy the artist
Selected Bibliography:
55th October Salon, Disappearing Things. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2014
Milorad Mladenović: Neposredni konteksti, Nov. 17 – Dec. 11, 2016, catalogue of the solo exhibition, Art Gallery, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Milorad Mladenović (1966, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated and obtained a master’s degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, where he has worked as an associate professor since 1995. His fields of activity are visual arts and architecture. He has participated in a great number of exhibitions in these fields in the country and abroad and been awarded several times for his work. He won three awards at the October Salons in Belgrade (2000, 2003 and 2014), the Main Award of the Nadežda Petrović Memorial in Čačak (2000) and other important awards for visual arts and architecture. His works were exhibited at Secession in Vienna (2004), Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (2005 and 2012), 10th Venice Architecture Biennale (2006), etc. He occasionally publishes articles on visual arts and architecture.