Male Matters
collage, mixed media
51 cm x 31 cm
2016
Male Matters Delicately
collage, mixed media
50 cm x 45 cm
2016
After Shave
collage, mixed media
50 cm x 20 cm
2016
Before Shave
collage, mixed media
50 cm x 45 cm
2016
The works belong to the Only Men Are Standing in front of You Cycle in which the artist continues to deal with pressing and provocative topics from social life, focusing on the perception of male-female relations in the modern world. In the constructed compositions that she builds through a precise procedure of cutting material from a pile of newsprint, photographs, old books, scanned pages, on which she then intervenes by painting, drawing with wooden crayons, glue, varnishes, fixers, the actors of her visual performances and scenes she builds are recognizable by their grotesque tone and the irony that the artist harmoniously fits into the ambience and atmosphere of the scene.
In these collages, kind of a mirror of visual thinking, there is play in mixing of time and space and placing the chosen characters in the situations on the verge of absurdity and sarcasm.
Jelena Trpković has created her own world of collage scene, based on the principle of the “accidental encounters of strangers” in a familiar space. Such starting point for thinking about the scene of the collage space is much closer to the montage of Godardian film images, in which she wants to round up the whole “film story” in a given closed space, leaving no detail “hanging” in an incommunicable relation with the whole of her collaged frame. Her works act as an “urban collage” of thinking, living and experiencing a well-known reality, which would not be a documentary-chronicle, but a kind of visual-creative metaphor. The dominant place in deciphering the meaning of form and content in the works by Jelena Trpković is left to the viewer and translated into the visual sense – through suggestive assumptions and symbols, and not literal or illustrative representations.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-377/29.10.2019.
Inventory No. 1660
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Selected Bibliography:
Jelena Trpković: Izložba kolaža, May 2005, catalogue of the solo exhibition, text by Kosta Bogdanović, Art Salon, Cultural Centre of Novi Sad, 2005
Jelena Trpković: Pred vama stoje samo muškarci, Nov. 8 – Dec. 6, 2018, catalogue of the solo exhibition, text by Stevan Vuković, Art Gallery, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2018.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jelena Trpković (1952, Belgrade, Serbia) graduated and received a master’s degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, under Professor Stojan Ćelić. She is a full professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Drawing Department. A member of ULUS. She works in the media of painting, drawing and collage. Jelena Trpković has presented her works at numerous exhibitions in the country and abroad and received a number of awards: Purchase Prize at the 18th October Salon (1977), Exhibition of the Month Award from Studio B (1992), Award from the Ivan Tabaković Fund, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (2000), Museum of Applied Arts Award at the 41st October Salon (2000) and Award at the exhibition Drawing and Small Plastic, Cvijeta Zuzorić Pavilion, Belgrade. Her works are part of many public and private collections in the country and abroad.