Nothingness
single-channel video installation
HD projection on round surface
1’45” in a loop, without sound
edition 1/5
2013
The video installation Nothingness is a specific video environment, where – in a dark space – the viewer encounters a stirring, dark surface that, in a slow, circular motion, acts as if drawing them into its mass. The circular and hot surface of tar, which reflects the surrounding space like a mirror, filmed from up close and projected in slow motion, almost covers with its reflection the heavy, sticky, hot, dense substance beneath the surface.
The work Nothingness, and the whole art practice of Anica Vučetić, exposes various inner processes of the artist, displaced from the reality in which they were produced. The allegorical content of this work has roots in the artist’s involvement with Jungian psychology, although in fact it carries deeply personal meanings. For Anica Vučetić, the exhibition space is often the measure, delimitation and metaphor for mental procedures, as dreams, memories and desires. Nothingness looks like a swirl of some liquid, darker and thicker than water. It is projected in a loop onto a round surface that the visitor faces in a fully darkened space. It spins slowly, in a hypnotizing way, and, since its dimensions are larger than human, it produces the effect of drawing the viewer into an alternate reality. There is no illusionism – that alternate reality cannot be seized by the gaze, but only invoked in the memory of the viewer. The installation presents a visualization of the dark chaotic psychic state, which used to be called nigredo by alchemists, and has its parallel in mystical literature as the dark night of the soul, and in mythology, in the descent into the underworld.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-378/16.11.2016.
Inventory No. 1455
Photo: still from the video installation
Selected Bibliography:
Anica Vučetić: The Fall, Sept. 6 – Oct. 20, 2013, text by Stevan Vuković, catalogue of the solo exhibition, Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2013
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anica Vučetić (1962, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated in painting (1986) and won her master’s degree (1989) from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. A freelance artist since 1989. She does video installations and video environments. Her works have been presented at more than thirty solo exhibitions in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Čačak, Vršac, Novi Sad, Požega, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of Sao Paulo, Museum Ludwig Forum for International Art in Aachen, Cuban Institute of Arts and Film Industry in Havana, Museum of Republika Srpska in Banja Luka, Rotovž Salon in u Maribor, in Raška, Sopot, at Perjanički dom in Podgorica… as well as at numerous group exhibitions and international events in the country and abroad (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, USA, Russia, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Greece, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, etc.). She has received major awards in the field of contemporary visual art: the 23rd Nadežda Petrović Memorial Award and the Audience Award at the 23rd Nadežda Petrović Memorial in Čačak (2005), the Grand Prix at the 9th Gornji Milanovac International Biennial of Arts and the Politika Prize from the Vladislav Ribnikar Fund in Belgrade (2008).