Jun 2010, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

A JOURNY THROUH THE NIGHT

Pictures on Bin Liners: Simonida Rajčević in the Gallery Perpétuel

Not exactly the shabbiest company that came together here: John Keats, for example, Lord Byron or William Blake, Rimbaud, Sylvia Plath or Dylan Thomas, with their seductive, glowingly gloomy verses, songs by Kurt Cobain, Nick Cave and Depeche Mode, over and over again, and here and there Sarah Kane, too: "No one can know what the night is like." Dark Star, as is the title of Simonida Rajcevic’s installation that fills the whole exhibition space with drawings, represents nothing less than a journey through the centuries to the romantic, sometimes somberly romantic, nocturnal side of modernity. It is being shown in the Gallery Perpétuel in Frankfurt (Oppenheimestraße 39).

The Belgrade-born artist (1974) treats the genuine inner attitude with the same earnestness as she does the vain pose. In her drawings, made with oil markers on dark grey bin liners, she blends existing pictures and her own, along with relevant textual fragments: she fuses pop and poetry, sex and drugs and rock'n'roll and iconic works from art history. A reminiscence of Duchamp's Fountain next to a portrait of Michael Jackson, an allusion to Blake's Demiurge, as well as pictures from porn magazines. One may call it daring, bold or even, polemically, name it a pose in itself, one that likes to use clichés. But it works anyway.

Not so much because all the talk of juvenile romanticism is immediately cast into doubt by the fact that quite a few of the poets, painters and musicians depicted here are stars on the artistic firmament who burnt out too early. Also not only because the more one progresses on this journey through the night, the harder it is to get out of one’s head Rilke's verses that resonate in this space. As if they had been written for this room, for the souls redeemed as well as for the souls lost: "They chose florescency, / and flowers are beautiful; / we chose maturing, / and that means effort and obscurity."

It is mostly because Rajcevic, with these hundred or so swiftly sketched pieces, mostly done in white on a dark grey surface, with occasional spells of glowing red, presents herself as a supreme draughtswoman who skilfully plays with texts and images, genres and styles and is in full command of her tools. Never mind that not every single one of these "feuilles" could exist for itself alone: it is as a space in which the trivial stands next to Rilke's or Rimbaud's verses, Cortney Love next to Gottfried Benn, landscapes next to portraits, graffiti next to still life-like arrangements that this Dark Star, dense, drowned in gloomy light and glittering from there all the more seductively, exerts its astonishingly suggestive power.

Christoph Schütte

Juni 2010, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

REISE DURCH DIE NACHT

MÜLLTÜTENBILDER : SIMONIDA RAJCEVIC BEI PERPÉTUEL

Es sind nicht die Schlechtesten, die sich hier ein Stelldichein geben. Jonh Keats etwa, Lord Byron oder William Blake, Rimbaud, Sylvia Plath oder auch Dylan Thomas mit ihren so verführerischen, glühend dunklen Versen. Songs von Kurt Cobain, Nick Cave und immer wieder Depeche Mode und ein uns andere Mal auch Sarah Cane : “No one can know what the night is like”. “Dunkler Stern”, so der Titel der installativen, den ganzen Raum mit ihren Zeichnungen füllenden Arbeit Simonida Rajcevics, ist den auch genau das : eine Jahrhunderte durchmessende Reise auf die romantisehe, mitunter Schwarz-romantische Nachtseite der Moderne. Zu sehen ist die Sehau derzeit in der Frankfurter Galerie Perpetuel (Oppenheimer Strase 39).

Dabei nimmt die 1974 in Belgrad geborene Künstlerin die innere Haltung geradeso ernst vie die eitle Pose und mixt in ihren mit Ölstift auf dunkelgrauen Müllsäcken entstandenen Zeichnungen vorgefundene mit eigenen Bildern und einschlägigen Textfragmenten, Pop mit Lyrik, Sex und Drugs und Rock`n` Roll mit ikonographischen Bildern der Kunstgeschichte. Eine Reminiszenz an Duchamps “Fontaine” findet sich ebenso wie ein Porträt von Michael Jackson, eine Paraphrase auf Blakes “Schöpfergott” geradeso wie Abbildungen aus Pornomagazinen. Das könnte man abenteuerlich, verwegen oder gleich selbst polemisch eine Pose nennen, die sich bevorzugt des Klischees bedient. Und doch, es funktioniert.

Weniger, weil das Wissen darum, das eine ganze Reihe der hier auftretenden Dichter, Maler, Musiker zu den früh verglühten Sternen am Künstlerfirmament gehört, die Rede von einer habituellen juvenilen Romantik sogleich erheblich relativiert. Nicht allein auch, weil einem, je weiter man vorankommt auf dieser Reise durch die Nacht, Rilkes Verse einfach nicht mehr aus dem Kopf gehen, die hier einen Resonanzraum finden. Beinahe, als seien sie fur diesen Ort, für die geretteten gerade vie für die verlorenen Seelen dieses Pantheons geschrieben :”Sie woltten blühn, / und blühn ist schön sein, / doch wir wollen reifen / und das heißt dunkel sein / und sich bemühn.”

Vor allem aber präsentiert sich Rajcevic mit diesen vielleicht 100 schnell hingeworfenen, meist in Weiß auf dunklem Grau mit gelegentlichen, rot glühenden Akzenten ausgeführten Arbeiten jenseits aller romantischen Implikationen als souveräne, mit Text und Bild, Genres und Stilen spielende Zeichnerin, die ihre Mittel virtuos beherrseht. Dass nicht jedes dieser „Blätter” für sich allein bestehen könntesei`s drum. Als Raum aber, vo Triviales neben Rilkes oder Rimbauds Verse zu stehen kommt, Courtney Love neben Gottfried Benn, Landschaften neben Porträts, Graffiti und stillebenartige Kompositionen, als Raum verfügt dieser dichte, in düsteres Licht getauchte und dort um sehr viel mehr verführerisch funkelnde “Dunkle Stern” über eine erstaunlich suggestive Kraft.

CHRISTOPH SCHÜTTE

Simonida Rajcevic is an artist from Belgrade – her show, the Dark Star, is on at the Zvono Gallery, closing on April 25th

THE POWER AND WARMTH OF AN ARTIST'S DEVOTION

Interview by Zorica Kojic

Because of her show currently on at the Zvono gallery, the Dark Star, the world of Rock 'n Roll is in debt to Simonida Rajcevic. So is the city of Belgrade, as her show has lured to Belgrade an entire constellation of stars of the popular culture, scattered across the world and across epochs, such as Miss Patti Smith, who also happens to be one of the artist's major sources of inspiration.Let there be no mistake about it: Patti Smith put in an appearance for the show's opening night on Monday 5 April on Visnjic Street. Their meeting seems to have resembled that between Patti Smith herself and her own idol Bob Dylan, described in her by now famous 1976 Rolling Stone interview. Miracles do happen – every now and then. The people portrayed in the show are a mixture of persons important to me in my private life, those I admire although I see them every day, as well as a number of Rock 'n Roll icons and well-known artists. Assembled here are portraits of River Phoenix, Olivera Katarina, Dash Snow, Milena Markovic, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Traci Emin, Oleg Novkovic, Karl Marx, Gilles Deleuze, Sonja Vukicevic, Courtney Love, and Sarah Kane. Also featured are quotes by Hole, Rimbaud, Byron, the Streets, Patti Smith, Walt Whitman, Alan Ginsberg, Bukowsky, William Blake, Sinnead o'Connor, Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams...

Surely, just as special are the way in which you made your drawings, the materials you used, the multiplicity of possible viewing angles and the way the show can be perceived by the public using their sensory apparatus (not limited to its optical aspect)? This work is an installation that creates an environment. It comprises a large number of drawings in oil marker pen on plastic and rubber. These are hardly textbook drawing materials, so perhaps the public will find it more interesting to go and experience it for themselves, rather than for me to describe it.

The show has a kind of soundtrack too, right?

That's right. It is an audio work by Minja Ristic and Ivana Kadelburg specially made for this show. It is 57 minutes long and features quotations in four different languages, as well as original music by some of Europe's most talented bands doing experimental and improvisational musical performance and musical quotes from Rock 'n Roll classics.

Patti Smith came to see your show, this is already a well-known fact. I suppose that must be quite a unique experience for an artist like you, particularly if one bears in mind the fact that her image appears in your show at least twice. What was it like when you met? Did she perhaps give you any piece of advice regarding art or life generally during the show's opening last Monday?

My friends had been busy for days trying to keep me from finding out that Patti Smith would be coming to my opening night. She had seen my work before and liked it. I spent an hour doing my best not to feel dizzy and trying to pull myself together enough to at least articulate properly. That is more or less what our meeting was like. The advice I got is quite private, so I would prefer to keep it to myself, but it is so valuable to me that I think I'll use it as a mantra each night before I fall asleep. What is fit for public use is that the great lady of Rock n' Roll told me she was happy to be there, not only because she liked the installation and praised Minja Ristic's audio in particular, but also because she felt a special atmosphere, something she called a mixture of power, warmth, artistic devotion, and family closeness, all things which, as she said, make a work like this successful, visible, and powerful. Credit for this goes to my friends, the team that helped with the technical aspects of the installation, my gallerists, and the people who attended the opening. To paraphrase briefly: “This powerful community of people that you have created allows the power and sound of this work to emerge and reach out to other people”.

Quelle: Serbische Tageszeitung Danas, Kulturrubrik

Kraft und Wärme künstlerischer Hingabe

Die Ausstellung "Dunkler Stern" der belgrader Künstlerin Simonida Rajcevic läuft in der Galerie Zvono bis zum 25. April

Simonida Rajcevic verpflichtete den Welt-Rock´n´Roll mit ihrer aktuellen Ausstellung "Dunkler Stern" in der Galerie Zvono, und dann verpflichtete sie auch Belgrad, indem sie ganze Sterngalaxien der Populärkultur dorthin angezogen hat, die weltweit und in allen längst verwehten und modernsten Zeiten zerstreut sind, unter ihnen auch Patti Smith als eine ihrer grundlegenden Inspirationen. Um Missverständnisse zu vermeiden, Smith war wirklich bei der Ausstellungseröffnung am Montag, den 5. April, in der Višnjiceva Straße anwesend. Ihre Begegnung scheint durchaus derjenigen von Patti Smith und ihrem großen Idol Bob Dylan ähnlich gewesen zu sein, die im Interview für die bekannte Zeitschrift Rolling Stone 1976 veröffentlicht wurde. Wunder passieren nun eben manchmal.

- Die ausgesuchten Persönlichkeiten sind eine Mischung von Portraits der Personen aus meinem Privatleben, die ich bewundere, obwohl ich sie jeden Tag zu Gesicht bekomme, sowie auch Rock´n´Roll Ikonen und bekannten Künstlern. Folgende Portraits sind vorzufinden: River Phoenix, Olivera Katarina, Desh Snow, Milena Markovic, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tracey Emin, Oleg Novakovic, Karl Marx, Gill Deles, Sonja Vukicevic, Courtney Love, Sarah Kane, wie auch Zitate von der Band Hole, Rimbaud, Byron, The Streets, Patti Smith, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Bukowski, William Blake, Sinead O`Connor, Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams...

Die Art und Weise auf die Sie ihre Zeichnungen angefertigt haben, die ausgesuchten Materialien und eine besondere Qualität der möglichen Beobachtungsperspektiven von seitens des Publikums mit ihren Sinnen - nicht nur optischen - sind auch zweifellos besonders?

Die Arbeit ist eine Rauminstallation, die aus einer großen Anzahl von Zeichnungen besteht, die mit Permanentmarkern auf Plastik und Gummi angefertigt wurden. Abgesehen davon, dass es sich um kein klassisches Zeichenmaterial handelt, wäre es vielleicht für das Publikum interessanter, es sich selbst anzuschauen und zu erleben als meine eigene Beschreibung.

Die Ausstellung hat auch ihr eigenes eigenartiges Soundtrack?

Das stimmt, das ist die Audioarbeit von Manja Ristic und Ivan Kadelburg, die speziell für diese Ausstellung gemacht wurde. Die Arbeit dauert 57 Minuten und besteht aus Textzitaten in vier Sprachen, sowie der Autormusik von so mancher der begabtesten europäischen Bands, die sich mit experimentellem und improvisatorischem Musikperforming befassen und aus Zitaten von Songtexten bekannter Rock´n´Roll Songs.

Es ist nun schon allgemein bekannt, dass ihre Ausstellung auch Patti Smith besucht hat, was für eine Künstlerin wie sie es sind, vermute ich, eine einmalige Erfahrung ist, vor allem wenn man daran denkt, dass man ihrem Gesicht bei dieser Gelegenheit mindestens zwei Mal begegnet - wie sah eure Begegnung aus und was für Lebens- und Künstlertipps hat sie Ihnen bei der Eröffnung am Montag mitgegeben?

Meine Freunde haben Tage lang daran gearbeitet vor mir zu verheimlichen, dass Patti Smith meine Ausstellung besuchen wird, da sie meine Arbeiten schon gesehen hatte und diese ihr gefallen haben. Ich habe eine Stunde lang versucht, das Gleichgewicht zu halten und mir Mühe gegeben mich soweit zusammenzureissen, um artikuliert reden zu können. So sah mehr oder weniger unsere Begegnung aus. Die Ratschläge, die ich von ihr bekam sind ziemlich privat, deswegen möchte ich jetzt nicht darüber reden, aber ich denke, dass ich sie immer vor dem Schlafengehen wiederholen muss, sie sind für mich von großer Bedeutung. Für die Öffentlichkeit wäre z.B., dass mir die große Rock´n´Roll-Lady gesagt hat, dass es sie freut diese Ausstellung zu besuchen, sowohl weil ihr die Installation und die Audioarbeit von Manja Ristic die sie besonders lobte, gefallen haben, als auch deswegen weil sie die außerordentlich besondere Stimmung spürte, die sie als Mischung von Kraft, Wärme, künstlerischer Widmung und familiärer Gemeinsamkeit bezeichnete, und welche ihren Worten nach eben das gewisse Etwas ist, was eine Arbeit erfolgreich, offensichtlich und kraftvoll erscheinen lässt. All das habe ich meinen Freunden, dem Team welches allein an der technischen Realisierung dieser Ausstellung arbeitete, meinen Galeristen, und den Menschen, die sich bei der Eröffnung versammelt haben, zu verdanken. Kurz gesagt, ich paraphrasiere: " Diese kraftvolle Gemeinschaft von Leuten, die ihr versammelt habt, führen dazu, dass die Kraft und der Klang der Arbeit viele andere Menschen berührt.

Zorica Kojic im Gespräch mit Simonida Rajcevic

DON'T GIVE UP, PATTI SMITH TOLD ME

Famous American singer Patti Smith turned up at Simonida Rajcevic's exhibition. What she didn't know was that she would find her portrait there, as well as quotes from her own songs. I did not know the famous Patti Smith would come to the opening night of my show. It was a surprise organised by my friends Milena Markovic, Oleg Novkovic, Ljuba Bozovic, and others. Patti Smith spent some days in Belgrade for private reasons, as Ralph Fiennes happens to be shooting a movie here just now, and she is friends with his wife. - says Simonida Rajcevic, the artists behind the Dark Star, a show that opened at Belgrade's Zvono Gallery on 4 April. The surprise had been days in the making. Simonida's friends, one of whom work on the set of Ralph Fiennes' film Coriolanus, decided to send the famous American singer some catalogues of Simonida's previous exhibitions, hoping that that might prompt her to go and see the new show. They were keeping me in the dark for days. Whenever I was at the gallery, someone would stay back with me to stall me, while someone else just nipped over to my place to get something. What they really did was to get all of my old catalogues and take them to the movie set. They say it was touch-and-go, all done in a hurry, and my friend Ljuba, who works on the set, had to come down from a scaffold to take delivery.

When I saw Patti at the opening, at first I was paralysed, but then I felt an enormous excitement.- says Rajcevic. As some of the drawing feature Patti Smith and quotes from her songs, Simonida thoughts her friends were the ones in store for a surprise, whereas it turned out exactly the other way around. The interesting thing is, prior to the opening night, no one really knew what exactly the exhibited works would be about. Patti Smith spent about an hour viewing the show. She closely studied the drawings in white marker pen on black bin liners covering the gallery walls from floor to ceiling. Once she had seen everything, she pulled the artists to one side and told her what she liked best.

Simonida says she mentioned three specific drawings, but she cannot remember which ones because she was simply too excited. At one point, people started vying for her attention, having their photo taken, while I tried to apologise to her for all the brouhaha. I was awfully confused, and I think I started stammering. Patti Smith told me she was used to situations like those: they are part and parcel of her work. She told me that had to be my work too and proposed that we have our picture taken. She gave me several pieces of advice about my art which I would prefer to keep to myself. What I can say is she told me to persist, to never give up, because life is long. She also said she felt an atmosphere of unity at the Zvono show. She particularly liked Minja Ristic's audio work which could be heard in the background throughout. - Simonida points out.

Her drawings feature portraits of people from her intimate circle, famous persons, and Rock stars who in different ways marked her teenage, her early adulthood, and her art. The left wall features a portrait of Patti Smith, and the ceiling another of the rock star and her close friend, the famous photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, when they were young. Mapplethorpe died of AIDS. She was really moved when she saw that drawing. - adds Simonida Rajcevic (born 1974), who teaches at Belgrade's Visual Arts Faculty. The portrait of our well-known playwright Milena Markovic sports a quotation from the well-known song Gloria. Milena and I had been singing and reinventing that song in both English and Serbian in hundreds of different ways for days before the show. It was as if we had somehow conjured up what eventually happened. - says the artist. One of the groups of drawings is dedicated to works by other artists across the ages such as Marcel Duchamp's pissoir, and toilet bowl, as well as similar works by Sarah Lucas. They are joined by Frances Bacon who puts in an appearance with another work featuring the toilet bowl: the one on which his friend died the night before one of Bacon's openings. Also shown are details from the movie “I Even Met Happy Gypsies” which Simonida claims played an important role in her life. Simonida Rajcevic's Dark Star is a gloomy universe peopled by persons, art, literature and music icons, whose lives were marked by tragedy. Patti Smith is one of those too, as she saw her husband, brother, and best friend all die within a year. Keeping her company at the show are Dash Snow, as well as Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain while they were still in love. Once the curtain falls on the Zvono Gallery exhibition, the Dark Star will be shown to German audiences.

Gib nicht auf, sagte mir Patti Smith

Bei der Ausstellungseröffnung von Simonida Rajcevic erschien die bekannte Sängerin Patti Smith persönlich, ohne zu wissen, dass sie in der Galerie ihr Portrait und Zitate aus ihren Songtexten vorfinden wird. Ich hatte keine Ahnung, dass auch die berühmte Patti Smith zu meiner Ausstellungseröffnung kommen wird. Das war eine Überraschng, die meine Freunde Milena Markovic, Oleg Novkovic, Ljuba Božovic und andere vorbereitet haben. Patti Smith war ein paar Tage privat in Belgrad, weil sie mit der Frau von Ralf Feins, der hier einen Film dreht, befreundet ist - sagt die Künstlerin Simonida Rajcevic, Autorin der Ausstellung "Dunkler Stern", die am 4. April in der belgrader Galerie Zvono eröffnet wurde. Die Überraschung wurde tagelang vorbereitet. Simonidas Freunde, von den einer mit dem Team aus Feinses Film "Coriolan" zusammenarbeitet, beschlossen der berühmten amerikanischen Sängerin, Patti Smith, Simonidas Kataloge der früheren Ausstellungen mitzubringen, um sie zu motivieren die Ausstellung zu besuchen.

- Sie haben mich die ganze Zeit abgelenkt. Während ich in der Galerie war, blieb immer jemand mit mir da, um mich aufzuhalten, der andere ging dann zu mir nach Hause, um angeblich etwas zu holen. Dabei haben sie mir alle Kataloge genommen und sie zu den Filmaufnahmen gebracht. Sie sagen, dass die Luft dort ziemlich dick war, und hektisch war es wohl auch, so dass mein Freund Ljuba, der am Film mitarbeitet, die Aufnahmen verließ, um die Kataloge zu übernehmen. Als ich bei der Eröffnung dann Patti plötzlich sah, dachte ich, mich trifft der Schlag, dann aber war ich so aufgeregt - sagt Simonida Rajcevic.

Abgesehen davon, dass auf ein paar Zeichnungen gerade Patti Smith erscheint sowie auch Teile aus ihren Songtexten, war Simonidas Absicht ihre Freunde zu überraschen, dabei wurde es nun anders herum. Ebenfalls interessant ist, dass vor der Ausstellung keiner genau wusste, was die Thematik der ausgestellten Arbeiten sein wird. Patti Smith hielt sich ungefähr eine Stunde in der Ausstellung auf. Sie schaute sich die Zeichnungen an, die mit weißem Permanentmarker auf schwarzen Nylontüten realisiert wurden, und mit den der ganze Raum der Galerie beklebt war. Als sie die Arbeiten gesehen hatte, nahm sie unsere Künstlerin zur Seite und sagte ihr, was ihr am besten gefalle.

Simonida sagt, dass sie 3 Arbeiten erwähnt hatte, aber dass sie sich vor lauter Aufregung nicht merken konnte, welche es waren.

- Danach haben die Leute angefangen sie hin und her zu ziehen, um Fotos mit ihr zu machen, und ich habe mich bei ihr deswegen die ganze Zeit entschuldigt. Ich war ziemlich durcheinander, ich glaube sogar gestottert zu haben. Patti Smith sagte mir hingegen, dass sie solche Situationen gewohnt ist, und dies auch ein Teil ihrer Arbeit ist. Sie sagte mir, dass das auch meine Arbeit sein soll, und schlug vor, uns fotografieren zu lassen. Sie gab mir ein paar Tipps bezüglich meiner Kunst, ich würde jetzt ungern öffentlich darüber reden. Aber ich kann sagen, dass sie mir riet, am Ball zu bleiben, nicht aufzugeben, weil das Leben lang ist. Sie sagte ebenfalls, dass sie bei der Ausstellungseröffnung in der Galerie Zvono die Atmosphäre der Gemeinsamkeit spürte. Vor allem gefiel ihr die Audioarbeit von Manja Ristic, die die ganze Zeit im Hintergrund lief - betont Simonida.

Auf den Zeichnungen unserer Künstlerin befinden sich Portraits aus ihrer intimen Umgebung, dann bekannte Persönlichkeiten, Rockstars, die auf mehrere Weisen ihr Erwachsenwerden, ihr Reifen und ihre Kunst gekennzeichnet haben. Auf der linken Wand befinden sich die Portraits von Patti Smith, und auf der Decke ist die Abbildung der Rocksängerin mit ihrem Busenfreund, dem berühmten Robert Mapplethorpe als sie noch jung waren. Mapplethorpe starb an den Folgen der Aids-Krankheit.

- Patti Smith war sehr berührt als sie diese Zeichnung sah - fügt Simonida Rajcevic (1974) hinzu, die als Dozentin an der Akademie für bildende Kunst in Belgrad arbeitet.

Ein Zitat aus dem bekannten Lied "Gloria" ist auf dem Portrait unserer bekannten Theaterschriftstellerin Milena Markovic ausgeschrieben.

- Als ob wir dieses Ereignis herbeirufen wollten, haben Milena und ich Wochen lang vor der Ausstellung "Gloria" auf verschiedene Weisen gesungen - sagt die Künstlerin.

Eine Gruppe der Zeichnugen sind den Arbeiten aus der Kunstgeschichte gewidmet worden, wie z.B. Duchamps Pisoir und seine Toilettenschüssel, sowie auch ähnliche Arbeiten von Sarah Lucas. Zu finden ist auch Francis Bacon mit einer Arbeit auf der ebenfalls das Motiv der Toilettenschüssel erscheint, auf der sein Freund kurz vor seiner Ausstellungseröffung starb. Gezeigt wurden auch Details aus dem Film „I even met happy gypsies“ (Ich traf sogar glückliche Zigeuner), der 1967 den Großen Preis der Jury beim Filmfestival in Cannes erhielt. Der Film, so Simonida Rajcevic, spielte eine wichtige Rolle in ihrem Leben. "Dunkler Stern" von Simonida Rajcevic ist ein trauriges Universum, das aus Persönlichkeiten, Kunst-, Literatur-, und Musikikonen besteht, deren Leben mit Tragik gekennzeichnet waren. Patti Smith ist auch eine von ihnen, abgesehen davon, dass sie im Laufe nur eines Jahres ihren Ehemann, den Bruder und besten Freund verloren hat. Zu finden sind auch Dash Snow oder Courtney Love und Kurt Cobain aus den Zeiten als sie noch glücklich verliebt waren.

Nach der Ausstellung in der Galerie Zvono wird der "Dunkle Stern" dem Publikum in Deutschland vorgestellt werden.

THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

Simonida Rajcevic: Installation “Dark Star”; Audio by Manja Ristic and Ivana Kaldenburg; Zvono Gallery

Simonida RAJCEVIC (Belgrade, 1972) obtained her MA under Momcilo Antonovic in 1999. She has taught at the FLU since 2000. So far, she has had a total of nine one-man shows, two of them abroad, in Erfurt and Milano. This is the 6th time she is exhibiting her work in Zvono Gallery.

Her most recent work,The Dark Star, is an installation made up of 150 drawings. The show focuses on the human figure drawn in white marker pen on black bin liners covering the gallery walls. Each drawing is accompanied by a short text which the artist uses to highlight a particular moment in her life. The gallery floor too is covered in black rubber sporting other drawings in marker pen. By entering the gallery, the viewer enters the work itself, his footsteps leaving a mark. The installation is accompanied by footage of phantasmagoric sounds and words.

Assessment: Simonida creates a direct interaction with the audience, which is the objective of every installation. She uses her own words, as well as quotes by Sarah Kane, such as “Moments like this never last” or “You indulge in this state of desperate senselessness”, to underline the subject of her work: the tragic sense of life. The dark backdrop connotes anxiety, while the star is the artist herself, her energy materialising in her drawings as a mark of her presence on earth, her presence in the galaxy. The contrast between the universal nature of the subject matter and the transient nature of the plastic bin liners is deliberate: upon leaving the gallery, the viewer cannot help but ponder the question of transience, one of life's crucial issues. Post scriptum: Simonida's messages are definitely explicit, but they are still a far cry from the New Nihilism espoused by Sarah Kane on the stage. The brutality of Kane's work is designed to shock the public, whereas Simonida's encourages contemplation. What makes the work of both artists meaningful is that their art emanates from life itself. And as for life itself, there is hope!

Serbische Tageszeitung Blic, Kulturrubrik

Autor: Milena Marjanović, Kunsthistorikerin

Das tragische Gefühl des Lebens

Simonida Rajcevic: Installation "Dunkler Stern"; Audio-Arbeit: Marija Ristic und Ivan Kaldenburg; Galerie Zvono Belgrad

Simonida Rajcevic (Belgrad, 1974) hat ihr Magisterstudium in der Klasse von Momcilo Antonovic 1999 absolviert. Ab dem Jahr 2000 unterrichtet sie an der Akademie für bildende Kunst in Belgrad. Bis jetzt hatte sie neun Einzelausstellungen, davon zwei im Ausland, in Erfurt und Mailand. Dies ist ihre sechste Ausstellung in der Galerie "Zvono".

Die neueste Arbeit "Dunkler Stern" ist eine Installation bestehend aus 150 Zeichnungen. Im Vordergrund steht die mit weißen Permanentmarkern auf schwarzen Nylontüten gezeichnete menschliche Figur, die die Wände der Galerie bedeckt. Jede Zeichnung ist vom kurzen Text begleitet, mit dem die Künstlerin auf einen Augenblick aus ihrem Leben hinweist. Selbst der Boden der Galerie ist ein schwarzer mit Permanentmarkern bemalter Gummiboden. Indem der Besucher den Fuß in die Galerie setzt, betritt er die Arbeit und hinterlässt schreitend seine eigenen Spuren darauf. Die Installation wird von einer Aufnahme phantasmagorischer Klänge und Wörter verfolgt.

Note: Simonida verwirklicht eine direkte Interaktion mit dem Publikum, was das Ziel einer jeden Installation ist. Ihre Zitate und die geborgten von Sarah Kane wie z.B. Augenblicke wie dieser sind nie von Dauer oder Du erlaubst dir diesen Zustand gnadenloser Sinnlosigkeit..., verstärken das Thema der Arbeit: das tragische Gefühl des Lebens. Der schwarze Hintergrund ist ein Hinweis auf die Schwermütigkeit, der Stern ist sie selbst, d.h ihre Energie, die sie durch die Zeichnung als eigene Anwesenheit auf Erden, bzw. in der Galaxie festhält. Der Kontrast zwischen der Universalität des Theams und der Vergänglichkeit des Nylons ist absichtlich, weil der Besucher nach dem Verlassen der Galerie und der in ihr aufgestellten Installation mit von wesentlichen Lebensfragen besessen wird.

Post Scriptum: Simonida ist in ihren Botschaften explizit, jedoch ist sie vom sogenannten Neu-Nihilismus den die Kane im Theater zum Ausdruck brachte, weit entfernt. Sarahs Werke schockierten die Öffentlichkeit mit ihrer Brutalität, Simonidas fordern zum Nachdenken heraus. Bei beiden ist die Kunst die Quelle des Lebens und deswegen macht sie Sinn. Und das Leben? - hat Hoffnung!

Milena Marjanovic, Kunsthistorikerin

SMASHING TABOOS

Simonida Rajcevic's extraordinary energy is again at work. Following the trail of the “Dark Star”, she has turned the space of the Zvono gallery into a muralled Orthodox church or Dubuffet's cave, filling every single centimetre of the available space with images. Instead of mosaics, the floor is covered with images painted on black bin liners: the kind used to deposit garbage into containers, but not just into containers. Instead of being primed for a fresco cycle, the walls and ceiling are also draped in bin liners. Likewise, the depicted scenes are hardly those illustrating the Saviour's life. Instead, we see images of earthly love, suffering, death, and sexual taboos being smashed... Unlike the kind of fresco cycles found in medieval monasteries, these images follow no pre-established narrative sequence. It is a powerful blast that partakes of both creation and extinction in equal measure. It has always been there since her earliest works, but the dynamic of the conflagration itself has changed. The “Wall of Serpents” has now been replaced by the “Dark Star”, the sequence of events careening into chaos.

More specifically: the conflagration rate is rising, but, much like the Bible's flame-proof olive tree, nothing is devoured by the flames. Everything is red hot and ablaze, but nothing is destroyed. Even the martyrs, over forty of them, or perhaps fewer, not that it matters, are consumed by this flame that rises from the soul, but does not burn the body. A white marker on a dark background, with no more than the occasional highlight in colour, adds a finishing touch to this deliberate environment. There is nothing random about the artist's choice of darkness: it didn't just come out of nowhere. It has always been there, sheltered deep in Simonida Rajcevic's world of sensations. It strikes one as a paradox that what is going on in this endless tunnel, amid all this blackness and darkness, is in actual fact a celebration of joy and pleasure, love and passion, fire and darkness. This is no mean feat: it takes a lot of empathy and sincerity to shrug off the anxiety and to simply say whether this is a good thing, or bad. It is from the innermost recess of darkness that the artist celebrates the light emanating from inside. Her procedure as a painter makes the whole thing viable and convincing: the drawings betray a steady hand, while the scenes are well thought out and executed with a sense of measure (the word measure not to be taken in too literal a sense, though).

Das Brechen der Tabus

Ungewöhnliche Energie von Simonida Rajcevic ist wieder am Werk. In der Galerie Zvono sucht sie den "Dunklen Stern", im Raum den sie in eine bemalte orthodox-christliche Kirche oder in Dubufe Höhle verwandelte, indem sie jeden freien Milimeter des Raumes ausfüllte. Der Boden ist kein Mosaik. Er besteht aus bemalten dunklen Abfallbeuteln die in einem Müllcontainer enden sollten, aber eben nicht nur im Müllcontainer. Die Wände und die Decke sind von dunklen Mülltüten, anstatt vom Freskenmörtel bedeckt. Die Szenen auf ihnen sind keine kirchlichen, etwa die aus dem Leben Christi oder anderer Zyklen, sondern Darstellungen der irdischen Liebe, des Kummers, des Todes und des Sex-Tabubrechens nach dem drei Punkte folgen: ... Es besteht keine durchkalkulierte Reihenfolge wie diejenige die für die Klöster des Mittelalters spezifisch ist. Dies ist ein Urknall, der gleichzeitig die Entstehung als auch der Untergang ist, und dies passiert in ihrem gesammten Opus, von den ersten Aufführungen bis heute. Nur diese gewisse Verbrennungskraft ist anders. Die frühere Installation "Schlangenwand" ist durch den "Dunklen Stern" ausgewechselt worden, d.h. die Reihenfolge des Vorgangs neigt tendenziell eher zum Chaos. Um genauer zu sein: Die Verbrennungskraft wächst, es glüht, aber es vernichtet nicht. Und ihre Märtyrer, die es mehr als 40 gibt, oder gar weniger, was auch unwichtig ist, verbrennen in dieser Flamme, die aus der Seele hervorquillt, aber der Körper wird dabei nicht verbrannt. Der weiße Filzstift auf dunklem Hintergrund, mit einem hin und wieder farbigen Akzent vervollkommnen die Atmosphäre, die der Künstlerin so wichtig ist. Die Dunkelheit ist weder zufällig ausgesucht worden noch ist sie aus dem Nirgendwo gekommen. Sie ist ewig und existiert in der Tiefe der Gefühle von Simonida Rajcevic. Es wirkt wie ein Paradox, dass sich in solch einer Schwärze, einer Dunkelheit, einem endlosen Tunnel etwas abspielt. Etwas, dass Freude und Leidenschaftlichkeit, Liebe und Lieblosigkeit, Flamme und Dunkelheit gleichzeitig zu lobpreisen vermag. Um dies zu vermitteln, erfordert so ein Unternehmen die Kraft des Erlebnisses und der Aufrichtigkeit, ohne sich darüber Gedanken zu machen, ob es gut oder schlecht ist. Im letztmöglichsten dunklen Punkt feiert sie das Licht, das innen scheint. Ihr malerisches Verfahren macht dies möglich und es überzeugt, d.h. eine sichere Zeichnung und klar profillierte und in Maßen ausgeführte Szenen, aber nur wenn man das Maß nicht wörtlich nimmt.

Vasilije B. Sujic

21 February 2008
Politika magazine

In the Realm of the Senses, In the Realm of Colour

Nowadays, there is such a great variety of contemporary art being shown in galleries everywhere that a high degree of professionalism and dedication is required, as well as a certain degree of empathy and interest, to follow the developments on the contemporary art scene, to spot the new trends, and to sort the wheat from the chaff. The principal challenge for art galleries is to formulate a clear programme and a coherent strategy. In this context, the Zvono Gallery stands out as one of the successful players on our cultural scene.

The promotion of young artists is at the very top of its agenda, a policy that has catapulted the Zvono Gallery into prominence in terms of actively shaping the new 21st Century art scene. Simonida Rajcevic (1974) is one of the group of young artists favoured by the gallery: their co-operation has been particularly succesful, as evidenced by a number of one-man exhibitions that Simonida has staged in this rather small gallery on Visnjic Street over the last decade. Taking a decisive step towards a closer integration into the complex international system facilitating the communication of ideas, persons, events, and money, the Zvono Gallery has also over the last years included Simonida Rajcevic in its own selections shown at art fairs in Vienna, Koln, and Moscow.

Simonida Rajcevic’s concept of art is rooted in the New Image poetics and its Neo-Expressionist trends. The artist’s faith in the act of painting itself, as well as in the very process of drawing and painting, is reasserted in her new work, the Snakewall: a monumental wall installation specially tailored to fit inside the Zvono Gallery. This drawing/painting on canvas is an endless frieze coursing and draping the gallery walls from floor to ceiling. Its visual energy and tension seems to take possession of the space, underlining its nature as an ambience. The scene has a labyrinthine lay-out: we are left to retrace the fragmented segments of the whole in which coarse black-and-white graffiti inscriptions slash across the work’s representational core. The drawings offer sketchy glimpses of human corporeality riven by passion, fear of the Original Sin, punishment, and alienation.

In the second part of this ophidian sequence, the Baroque-like opulence of the reds is transformed into a dialogue of memory codes. This time, quite obviously, the painter has found a foothold in the dialogue beteween art-historical milestones on the one hand, and the dialectic of contemporary art on the other. The narrative sequence unfolds between sketches for a large-scale, old-master-like historical scene, the kind that might have been painted by Michelangelo, Rubens, or El Greco, and the convulsive qualities of the 21st Century’s hyperconsumerism. Erotic scenes from well-known films are quoted as well. The artist feels the pulse of different epochs across the centuries, until the drama reaches fever pitch.

By referencing well-known iconographic patterns inherent to both subjective and historical memory, the painter actually moves with the flow of an inner time and/or rhythm. In the Snakewall, Simonida Rajcevic creates her own Babel by focussing on timeless subjects. She puts her ear to the heart of time and hears the inexorable succession of its codes, the archetypes of Eros and Thanatos, their consumption and eventual oblivion, phenomena which each generation must encrypt anew, using the language of its own time. The show’s name itself – the Snakewall – is pregnant with polysemy and connotations including mythical chronology, the relationship between God and man, between the sacred and the profane, being transformed into the imperative mode of the here-and-now, subjected to our confused meanings, to our haste. Daniela Puresevic wrote up the transposition of selected motifs into impressive visual wholes. You should visit the exhibition to see for yourself what Simonida Rajcevic’s outstanding talent as a painter is all about.

21. Februar 2008, Quelle: Tageszeitung Politika

Im Reich der Sinne und Farben

Ausstellung „Snakewall“ von Simonida Rajcevic in der Galerie Zvono

Die durch die Galerien vermittelte zeitgenössische Kunstproduktion ist heutzutage sehr verbreitet. Um die neuen Erscheinungen verfolgen und klarer sehen zu können, bedarf es hoher professionellen Hingabe, gewisser Neigungen, eines erkennbaren programmatischen Konzepts und einer sicheren Strategie. Die Galerie Zvono (www.galerijazvono.org) kann zu den Beispielen eines gelungenen Kunstkonzepts unserer Kulturszene gezählt werden.

Mit ihren Ausstellungsprogrammen im Zeichen der Anerkennung junger Autoren hat sie einen herausragenden Platz im Sinne der aktiven Etablierung neuer Künstlerszene im 21. Jahrhundert eingenommen.
Simonida Rajčević (1974) gehört auch zur Gruppe junger Künstler, die von dieser Galerie promotet und vertreten werden. Eine erfolgreiche Zusammenarbeit hinsichtlich der  Beziehung Künstler - Galerie ist im Falle der Rajčević - Zvono offensichtlich. Dies beweisen die belgrader Einzelausstellungen dieser Malerin, die im Laufe des letzten Jahrzehnts in den nicht all zu großen Galerieräumlichkeiten in der Višnjićeva Straße realisiert wurden. Indem Zvono einen erheblichen Fortschritt in der Vernetzung ins komplexe internationale System der Kommunikation von Ideen, Persönlichkeiten, Ereignissen und finanziellen Mitteln vollbrachte, hat die Galerie in der Gruppe ausgewählter Autoren in den vergangenen Jahren auch das Werk von Simonida Rajčević auf den Kunstmessen in Wien, Köln und Moskau vorgestellt.

Das künstlerische Konzept von Simonida Rajčević beruht auf der Poetik des neuen Bildes und seinen neoexpressionistischen Abläufen. Der Glaube an den malerischen Vorgang und den Prozess des Zeichnens und Malens ist in ihrer neuen Arbeit Snakewall bestätigt worden, einer speziell auf die Größe der Galerie Zvono projizierten monumentalen Wand-Installation. Diese Bildzeichnung auf der Leinwand welche wie ein unüberschaubarer Fries die Wand vom Boden bis zur Decke überdeckt, begleitet und mit visueller und energetischer Tension gar den Raum physisch übernimmt und somit das Ambientale in ihm suggeriert. In labyrinthafter Darstellung der Szene sind einzeln die Segmente der Komposition zu sehen, in denen die zeichnerische Textur durch Figurierung von schwarz-weißen expressiven Graffitischriften getrennt wird.

In der Zeichnung werden die Einzelteile der menschlichen Körperlichkeit dargestellt, diese werden wiederum von: Begierde, Ursündenangst, Strafe und Entfremdung unterdrückt.

Im zweiten Teil dieses schlangenhaften Ablaufs verwandelt sich die barockisierte Pracht piktureller Werte der roten Farbe in einen heftigen Dialog verschiedener Gedächniskodes. Offensichtlich findet die Malerin ihren Ausgangspunkt diesmal im Dialog zwischen den Beispielen aus der Geschichte und des zeitgenössischen Diskurses. Der narrative Ablauf findet zwischen den Zeichnungen großer historischen Komposition alter Meister, nach dem Michelangelo-Rubens-El Greco Vorbild und der konvulsiven Eigenschaften der Hyperkonsum-Zivilisation des 21. Jahrhunderts statt. Zusammen mit dem Zitieren der erotischen Szenen aus bekannten Filmen und des Lauschens unterschiedlicher Epochen, gestaltet sich der Ablauf bis hin zum Punkt einer dramatischen Hochspannung heraus.

Die Malerin verfolgt eigentlich den Ablauf der inneren Zeit und/oder des Rhythmus in den verschiedenen Zitatteilen bekannter ikonographischer Formeln der subjektiven und historischen Erinnerung. Indem sie in ihrer Arbeit „Snakewall“ ein eigenes künstlerisches Babylon kreiert, ist Simonida Rajčević auf ewige Themen fokusiert - lauscht verschiedenen Zeitkodes nach, den Archetypen Eros und Tanatos sowie auch ihrer Verschwendung und Vergessenheit. Dies sind Phänomene die jede Generation in einer eigener Zeitsprache kodiert. Allein der Name der Ausstellung „Snakewall“ beinhaltet mehrdeutige Konnotationen, durch welche die mythische Chronologie und die Gott - Mensch Beziehung auf eine sakrale und heilige Weise in den Bereich des Imperativs des Hier und Jetzt und seiner mißverstandenen Bedeutungen und Geschwindigkeiten übertragen werden. Danijela Purešević schrieb zu dieser Ausstellung: „…über die Transponierung ausgesuchter Motive in beeindruckende visuelle Einheiten“. Sie können sich auch vom enormen malerischen Talent der Simonida Rajčević vergewissern und überzeugen, wenn Sie ihre Ausstellung besuchen.

Ljiljana Cinkul

SNAKE – WALL 

Ancient Egyptians believed that every human being consists of physical and spiritual parts called aspects. Besides body, every human has its Shwt (shadow), Ba (personality or soul),  Ka (life force) and Ren (the name). (Wikipedia)

Throughout the wall, Simonida Rajcevic creates a form of labyrinth, resembling the halls of Egyptian tombs, where the life of the painted bodies is induced by mythical chronology. This pyramidal association gives narrative symbolism to Simonida’s bodies, drawing the observer into the (angular) center of the painting. The observer, then, realizes that the snakes, like other beings, are merely part of gradation, a sequence that leads to a non-thematic solution.

Since the very nature of canvas is to be artificially placed on concrete, it will sooner or later leave its walls in the finite form of a construction’s end, and this very act of infidelity brings about a new interpretation angle to each new background with which the paintings are conjoined.

The snakes are here to scare away gods, but not a figurative journey free with its layered conotations. With this, Simonida Rajcevic blends Western journey with Eastern space. In this borderline territory, gods are integral part of Eastern mimic, but their bodies are victims of Western artistic feast which the painter, like Dionises, gives in honor of the Nitschean history of the world. 

Marko Kostiić

(Translation by Helena Đorđević)

SNAKEWALL

With the force of a typhoon, Simonida Rajčević sweeps through the entire landscape of civilization searching for the purpose of human body, sexuality, sin, and taboos. Reports from her journeys are shaped in two friezes – two monumental Snakewalls.

By its structure and composition, one Snakewall is more linear in its narration, more gradual and analogue. The other one is fragmented, unpredictable, closer to digital language code. However, both are fiercely expressive and dramatic, both full of tension characteristic for the matter that is about to break and explode.

The crucial element of these walls is, naturally, the richly symbolic snake – the symbol of Man’s original sin according to the Bible, but also the symbol that unites the aspects of ground and underground, water and fire, positive and negative, but also the principles of male and female, signifying sexual duality.

An important support role in the construction of the Snakewall naturally belongs to the wall itself – a barrier towards the unknown, a restriction, an obstacle, a line of division but also a strong carrier of civilization messages from the Western (Wailing) Wall, through the Great Wall of China to Berlin Wall and many other nameless walls.

Realized in the poetic key of „the Creation of the World“ (entailing both the story of the sin as well as the story of the serpent), with implicit aroma of drama and pathos, the two friezes resonate with the thunder of God’s wrath after the original sin was committed, the wrath which destroyed the pure and idylic world of Eden. Creating her own monumental compositions, Simonida Rajcevic chooses and relies on elements from common civilizational art collection, primarily the underscored carnal element and Eros that support her thought – from antique sculptures, through the figurative codes of Michaelangelo, El Greco, Rembrandt, Rubens, as well as Haring and Basquiat, with touches of Goya and literature of Boris Vian, to the reminiscences and quotes from Emanuela, Last Tango in Paris, In the Realm of the Senses, French erotic movies, all the while borrowing important influences from graffiti art, comics, film techniques, rock’n’roll... Black, white and red, sometimes they are more of a drawing, sometimes more a painting, in the dramatic storm of Eros and Tanatos.

The symptomatic point of one of these two Snakewalls, the one with a more compact narrative line, is surely a place where the cut is made from color to black and white (this meaningful cut, among other things, marks the transition from painting to film quotations). Somewhere on the borderline between these two worlds, in the color field, we recognize as a dominant figure one of Laocoon’s sons from El Greco’s famous painting Laocoon. Laocoon and his sons, or the Laocoon Group, frequently interpeted as the basic patern in scultpure and fine art from ancient times until today, is the embodiment of the myth of Trojan priest Laocoon. Apollo sent two serpents againt Laoccon and his sons, that, after a dramatic struggle, take them forever to the darkness of the underworld. However, it is less known that Laocoon did not incur the wrath of Apollo only by taking part in the Trojan war, but also because, much earlier, he defied the rule of priesthood by getting married and begetting sons, and by daring to have sexual intercourse with his wife in Apollo’s sanctuary, in front of his statue.

German archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, speaking of the ancient Greek Laoccon Group in the 18^th century, points out to the paradox of getting the impression of exquisite beauty while observing the scene of death and fall. With the same suspense of Eros and Tanatos, Simonida Rajcevic unites all protagonists of the two friezes into one big Laocoon’s family entangled into serpent’s coil.

Danijela Purešević

(Translation by Helena Đorđević)

ACRYL AFTERNOONS

Italian 15^th century Renaissance art, among other fundamental changes, introduced the human body as an effective unit of the scene, story and emotional character presented. To simplify, the character of the figure did not depend either on physiognomy (the individual character), or on strict religious canons which represented the consummation of the painting as the moment of religious elevation. The painting was above all determined by the way in which the figure moved. In his “Treatise on Painting”, Alberti said the following:” There are movements of body: growth, shrinkage, illness, recovery, movements from one place to another..We, the painters who want to show the movements of spirit by movements of body parts, use only the movements from one place to another.”

In other words, it is revealed that expression is achieved only through the relation between the bodies in the painting, and thus the age of theatricality begins in art.

However, “the old masters” invoked from the past in the paintings of  Simonida Rajcevic, are not the artists from the 15^th century, but from the 16^th and even 17^th century; artists like Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rubens and especially Tintoretto and El Greco. These are the artists in whose paintings the movements and relations between bodies are not only the plastic signs which determine the composition of the painting trough Alberti’s model: “surface – member – body – painting”.

In their paintings the body is ecstatic, dominant but vulnerable, the thing that causes or presents the aim of God’s intervention; a body whose anatomy is exposed to a delirious painter’s experimentation, shortenings or assigns unnaturalistic coloring. Such a body, put in impossible positions, actually becomes the central metaphor of transformation that art makes. Michelangelo’s figura serpentinata , as the model for art which in history is denoted as manneristic ( and the figure which Alberti rejected as excessively unequal since it exposed the front and the back side at the same time), was a mobile form compared to the sight of flame; a figure which depended less and less on the real qualities and potential of the body, and more and more on the exploration of bordering spiritual and physical situations in which it was represented. But also, thanks to the marvelous possibilities and distortions of such a figure, the space of the painting becomes less a stage, and more a specific space in which the laws of gravity are decreasingly simulated and illusion increasingly develops on both imaginary sides of the painted surface.

In contrast to the paintings that have justly attracted most attention in last few years on the Belgrade scene – the so – called “first person painting”, the ego-painting where the identification develops primarily through the faces and the net of returned glances (and which is in its distant background deeply Byzantine) – the paintings of Simonida Rajcevic very determinedly and convincingly impos the centrality of body and its gestures as the main mystery of art and experience of the 90-ies. In this sense, the paintings of old masters, i.e. the chosen fragments of these paintings, serve as the traditional models of bodily affectation, which are transformed by the technique of acrylic (which Simonida uses) into the world of quick results and media manipulation. However, from the professional point of view,  Simonida’s “express old masters” show that some characteristics of her models can be successfully articulated again in the art of our time. Her painting is full of motion, “fiery” moves, orientated towards plastics of figures achieved by warm but also “poisonous” coloring with few cold shadows. As such, it is both fresh and quite sufficiently “sick” for the time we live in. The choice of acrylic is interesting in the conceptual way too, for acrylic is a technique of the 20^th century, the color which Pollock poured out over his canvases, the color of unmistakably even surfaces of minimalistic painting, but also a technique that was already first in use in the 20-ies by an excluded but influential group of Mexican muralists. Acrylic therefore originally appears as a mediator between huge surfaces, the domination of the presented bodies and unconcealed social involvement.

The exhibition of paintings by which the gallery ZVONO achieves a compressed paraphrase of those aggressive painted chambers like the Sistine Chapel, is surely extended in the installation of this artist presented in 1995 under the name THE LAST SURVIVOR FROM THE NOSTROMO.        In it the modern SF model (films from “the Alien” cycle) was used as metaphorical articulation of the current social, sexual and political relations, new feministic theories and, generally the disintegration of the patriarchate on one side, and incurable viruses and wars on the other side. In the case of this installation too (as a result of the traditional painter’s nerve) the body is the focus of the “actual experience “ the voice of nature that express its presence in culture by its own fear for existence.

In each of Simonida’s paintings there are bodies in movement taken over from the number of originals, but this combination of fragments does not invite us to decode the allegorical meaning, characteristic for the paintings of the 80-is, but puts in the front plane the question of the logic of physical presentation. However, in this painting, the demanding observer will find some “thematic” rules, some motives, which are mostly connected with events in relation to Christ’s torments, the moment when the body of the Savior takes over the sins of mankind. However, in Simonida’s paintings there is no Christ’s body, it is the marked absence, with the whirlpool of other bodies that gesticulate his sacrifice around it. And to return to beginning, to the 15^th century, when bodies in paintings began to move, gesticulate and to open to personal visions, but when the figure of Christ was still an untouchable canon, the body without a body, once and for all described mystery. In every attractive painting, and even in one that is swarming with invested exists, which really makes our view active.

Branislav Dimitrijević

(Translation by Helena Obradović and Vanesa Strojić)

HARDWARE NOSTALGIA

The aesthetic of the first Terminator movie, structured around machines that get out of human control, every day becomes less ad less a threatening product of the progress, and more and more romanticized nostalgia for human belief that progress of mechanical technology cannot be stopped and that grandiosity of heavy hardware in itself has the potential to imply the strength that goes out of the control of its constructors. In relation to the second film of the sequence, which is dominated by sophisticated computer effects, cyber-aesthetic of the liquid metal and synthetic material replaced by body tissues, the first Terminator today seems like a document of the last phase of development of modernism: material and technology are brought to perfection but still armored with a real space, and conventional states of aggregation, with stressed monumentality and solidness as the main aims of mechanical technology.

Huge machines, huge like cranes, have lost their threatening potential with the coming of micro technology, and the obsession with creating micro-dimensions is exactly what grants the possibility of romanticizing old machines, regardless of their obvious utilitarianism. There is not much left of synonyms: construction, progress, prosperity – only utility within the disciplines or human activities (architecture, heavy industry) where the size is conditioned by the object that ocupy large areas in space. Consistently romanticised painting reduces them to human (gallery) dimensions. Of course, it could be done with digital technologies or 3D animation, but that would conceptualize other kinds of problems and imply patronizing superiority of miniature technologies, and in certain way dislocate another crucial aspect which machines like cranes undoubtedly posses. Although huge machines have lost everything but their monument-like monumentality, they still have their almost exclusive capacity to be installed in space and to set instalation in space.

Huge construction machine already represents an installation in space and need not be repeated as an installation in a gallery. Its two-dimensional representation becomes a document of the installation – so that artistic intervention appears only when the existing state is documented. Therefore, the landscape in the paintings of Simonida Rajcevic does not appear as autonomous; it is constructed by the shapes of the cranes and is discursively determined by the use of gold establishing in that way also a relation towards modernistic heritage.

Unlike modernistic painting, those paintings do not provide the real kind of fulfillment: closure, balance, harmony. Although there is a feeling that these elements are present, that the debt to the formalistic, clasical painting has been acknowledged, the presence of gold reminds us of the feeling of uneasiness, uneasiness which Sherrie Levine in her “great golden knots” recognizes as the uneasy death of modernism.

Branislava Andjelković

(Translation by Helena Obradović)

11.04.2010. Dnevni list Danas

SNAGA I TOPLINA UMETNICKE POSVECENOSTI

11.04.2010. dnevni list Politika, Kulturna rubrika

NE ODUSTAJ, REKLA MI JE PATI SMIT

Slike na kesama za dubre: Simonida Rajcevic u galeriji Perpétuel

Nisam znala da ce na otvaranje moje izlozbe doci cuvena Pati Smit. To je bilo iznenadenje koje su mi priredili moji prijatelji Milena Markovic, Oleg Novkovic, Ljuba Božovic i ostali. Pati Smit je bila nekoliko dana u Beogradu privatno jer se druži sa ženom Ralf Fajnsa koji ovde snima film – kaže umetnica Simonida Rajcevic autorka izložbe “Tamna zvezda” koja je otvorena 4. aprila u beogradskoj galeriji “Zvono”.

Iznenadenje je pripremano danima. Simonidini prijatelji, od kojih jedan radi sa ekipom Fajnsovog filma “Koriolan” , odlucili su da cuvenoj americkoj pevacici Pati Smit dostave Simonidine kataloge sa prethodnih izložbi, kako bi je motivisali da dode na njenu najnoviju izložbu. Danima su me zamajavali, dok sam ja bila u galeriji, neko ostane sa mnom da me zadržava, a drugi ode kod mene kuci da, kao, nešto uzme. Ustvari, uzeli su mi sve kataloge i nosili na snimanje filma. Kažu da je bilo napeto,žurba, pa je moj prijatelj Ljuba koji radi na filmu silazio sa skele da bi ih preuzeo. Kada sam na otvaranju videla Pati, mislim da sam se paralisala, a onda me je obuzelo ogromno uzbudenje – kaže Simonida Rajcevic. Sa obzirom da je na nekoliko crteža Pati Smit i delovi iz njenih pesama, Simonida Rajcevic je mislila da svojim prijateljima priredi iznenadenje, ali ispalo je obrnuto, i zanimljivo je da pre otvaranja niko nije ni znao šta je tacan sadržaj izloženih radova.

Pati Smit se zadržala na izložbi oko sat vremena. Pažljivo je gledala crteže realizovane belim markerom na crnim najlon kesama kojima je od plafona pa do poda optocen prostor galerije. Kada je pogledala radove, povukla je našu umetnicu u stranu i rekla je šta joj se najviše dopada. Simonida kaže da je spomenula tri crteža, ali od uzbudenja nije bila u stanju da zapamti koji su. Onda su ljudi poceli da je vuku, da se fotografišu sa njom, a ja sam joj se izvinjavala za takvu atmosferu. Užasno sam bila zbunjena, mislim da sam mucala. Pati Smit mi je rekla da je ona navikla na takve situacije i da je to deo njenog posla. Rekla mi je da to mora biti i moj posao i predložila da se fotografišemo. Dala mi je nekoliko saveta u vezi sa mojom umetnošcu, ali ne bih sada javno o tome govorila. Mogu da kažem da mi je rekla da moram da budem uporna, da ne odustajem, jer je život dug. Takode mi je rekla da je na izložbi u „Zvonu“ osetila atmosferu zajedništva, a posebno joj se dopao audio rad Manje Ristic koji se sve vreme cuje u pozadini – istice Simonida Rajcevic

Na crtežima naše umetnice nalaze se portreti iz intimnog okruženja, zatim poznate licnosti, rok zvezde koje su na više nacina obeležile njeno odrastanje, sazrevanje, umetnost. Na levom zidu nalazi se portret Pati Smit, a na plafonu, ova rok pevacica sa svojim velikim prijateljem cuvenim fotografom Robertom Mepltropom kada su bili mladi. Mepltrop je umro od side. Bila je vrlo dirnuta kada je videla taj crtež – dodaje Simonida Rajcevic (1974) inace docent na fakultetu likovnih umetnosti u Beogradu. Citat iz cuvene pesme „Glorija“ ispisan je na portretu naše poznate dramske spisateljice Milene Markovic. Kao da smo prizivale dogadaj, Milena i ja smo nedeljama pre izložbe pevale i prepevavale „Gloriju“ na najrazlicitije nacine – kaže umetnica. Jedna grupa crteža posvecena je radovima iz istorije umetnosti, kao što su Dišanov pisoar i ve-ce šolja, kao i slicni radovi Sare Lukas. Tu je i Frensis Bejkon sa radom na kome se takode pojavljuje motiv ve-ce šolje na kojoj je umro njegov prijatelj vece uoci otvaranja Bejkonove izložbe. Prikazani su i detalji iz filma „Skupljaci perja“, koji je, kako kaže Simonida Rajcevic, bio važan u njenom životu. „Tamna zvezda“ Simonide Rajcevic je tužan univerzum sastavljen od licnosti, ikona umetnosti, literature i muzike ciji je život obeležen tragikom.

I Pati Smit je jedna od njih buduci da su joj u roku od godinu dana umrli muž, brat, i najbolji drug. Tu su i Deš Snou ili Kortni Lav i Kurt Kobejn iz vremena kada su bili srecno zaljubljeni. „Tamna zvezda“ ce posle galerije „Zvono“ biti predstavljena publici u Nemackoj.

MARIJA ÐORÐEVIC

April 2010, dnevni list Blic

TRAGICNO OSECANJE ŽIVOTA

Simonida Rajčević (Beograd, 1974) magistrirala je 1999. u klasi Momčila Antonovića. Od 2000. radi na FLU u Beogradu. Dosad je imala devet samostalnih izložbi, od kojih dve u inostranstvu, u Erfurtu i Milanu, a ova joj je šesta u „Zvonu“.

Najnoviji rad „Tamna zvezda“ je instalacija koja čini 150 crteža. Dominira ljudska figura nacrtana belim markerima na crnim najlon-kesama kojima oblepljuje zidove galerije. Svaki crtež prati kratak tekst kojim umetnica ukazuje na neki trenutak svog života. I pod galerije prekriven je tamnom gumom iscrtanom markerom. Ulaskom u galeriju, gledalac zapravo ulazi u rad, a gazeći ostavlja sopstveni trag na njemu.Instalaciju prati snimak fantazmagoričnih zvukova i reči.

Ocena : Simonida ostvaruje direktnu interakciju sa publikom, što je i cilj svake instalacije. Svojim citatima i onih pozajmljenih od Sare Kejn, kao što su „trenutci poput ovog nikada ne potraju“ ili „ Ti sebi dopuštaš ovo stanje očajničkog besmisla...“ pojačava temu rada : tragično osećanje života. Tamna pozadina upućuje na teskobu; zvezda je ona sama to jest njena energija koju crtežom beleži kao trag sopstvenog prisustva na Zemlji, odnosno u galaksiji. Kontrast između univerzalnosti teme i privremenosti najlona je nameran jer posmatrač po izlasku iz galerije (rada) biva obuzet ključnim životnim pitanjem prolaznosti.

Post scriptum : Simonida jeste eksplicitna u svojim porukama, ali je daleko od tzv. novog nihilizma koji je Kejnova promovisala u pozorištu. Sarina dela su brutalnošću šokirala javnost, Simonidina je teraju na razmišljanje. Kod obe umetnost izvire iz života i zato ima smisla. A život ? – ima nade !

MILENA MARJANOVIC

RAZBIJANJE TABUA

21.Feb.2008, 12:00, Izvor: Politika

U carstvu Čula i boje

Postavka Snakewall Simonide Rajcevic u galeriji „Zvono”

Savremena umetnicka produkcija projektovana kroz galerijsku praksu danas je veoma razudena, a da bi se nove pojave na recentnoj sceni jasno uocile, izdvojile i pratile, neophodni su velika profesionalna posvecenost, odredeni afinitet, prepoznatljiv programski koncept i strategija same galerije. U tomkontekstu, Galerija „Zvono” je danas jedna od uspelih primera na našoj kulturnoj sceni. Naime, svojim programima u znaku afirmisanja mladih autora zauzela je upadljivu poziciju aktivnog profilisanja nove umetnicke scene u 21. veku. U grupi mladih autora koje ova galerija promoviše je i Simonida Rajcevic (1974); uspešna poslovna saradnja na relaciji umetnik – galerija u slucaju Rajcevic – „Zvono” ocita je u slikarkinim (beogradskim) samostalnim izložbama koje su tokom protekle decenije realizovane u ovom nevelikom galerijskom prostoru u Višnjicevoj ulici. Cineci jedan upadljiv pomak ka umrežavanju u složeni internacionalni sistem komunikacije ideja, licnosti, dogadaja i novca, „Zvono” je, takode, proteklih godina u grupi odabranih autora predstavilo i rad Simonide Rajcevic na sajmovima umetnosti u Becu, Kelnu, Moskvi. Umetnicki koncept Simonide Rajcevic fundiran je u poetici nove slike i njenim neoekspresionistickim tokovima. Vera u slikarski cin i sam proces crtanja i slikanja potvrdena je u novom radu Snakewall, monumentalnoj zidnoj instalaciji specijalno projektovanoj prema gabaritima „Zvona”. Ovaj crtež-slika na platnu, kao nepregledan friz prati i pokriva zid galerije od poda ka plafonu i svojom vizuelnom i energetskom tenzijom gotovo da fizicki osvaja prostor i sugeriše njegovu ambijentalnost. U lavirintskom toku scene pratimo fragmentisane segmente kompozicije u kojima crtacko tkivo figuracije presecaju crno-beli ekspresivni zapisi grafita. Crtežom su skicirani pasaži ljudske telesnosti pritisnuti požudama, strahom od pragreha, kazne i alijenacije. U drugom delu ovog zmijolikog toka barokizirana raskoš pikturalnih vrednosti crvene boje prerasta u žestoki dijalog razlicitih memorijskih kodova. Ocito, slikarka svoju uporišnu tacku ovoga puta nalazi u dijalogu kardinalnih primera iz istorije umetnosti i savremenog umetnickog diskursa. Narativni tok se odvija izmedu skica za veliku istorijsku kompoziciju starog majstora mikelandelovsko-rubensovsko-elgrekovskog uzora i konvulzivnih svojstava hiperkonzumne civilizacije 21. veka. Uz citiranje erotskih kadrova iz poznatih filmova, ovo osluškivanje razlicitih vremena razvija se do tacke visokog dramskog naboja. U razlicitim citatnim tackama poznatih ikonografskih obrazaca subjektivnog i istorijskog secanja slikarka, zapravo, prati tok unutrašnjeg vremena i/ili ritma. Stvarajuci sopstveni umetnicki Vavilon u radu Snakewall (Zmijski zid), Simonida Rajcevic fokusira vecne teme – osluškuje razlicite kodove vremena, arhetipove Erosa i Tanatosa kao i njihovo trošenje i zaborav, a to jesu fenomeni koje svaka generacija kodira na svoj jezik-vreme. I sam naziv postavke Snakewall sadrži višeznacne konotacijeu kojima su mitska hronologija i odnos Bog–Covek i sakralno–svetovno transferisani u domen imperativa vremena sada i ovde i njegovih pobrkanih znacenja i brzina. O transponovanju odabranih motiva u impresivne vizuelne celine pisala je za ovu postavku Danijela Pureševic. U raskošni slikarski talenat Simonide Rajcevic uvericete se odlaskom na izložbu.

Ljiljana Cinkul

Stari Egipćani su verovali da je svako ljudsko biće sastavljeno od fizičkih i  duhovnih delova koji se nazivaju aspekti (pojave). Osim tela, svaka osoba ima šwt (senku), ba (ličnost ili dušu), ka (životnu energiju) i (ren) ime. (Wikipedia)

Prateći prostiranje zida, Simonida Rajčević pravi svojevrsan lavirint, poput hodnika egipatske grobnice u kojima je život likovnih tela indukovan mitskom hronologijom. Ova piramidalna asocijacija daje Simonidinim telima narativnu simboliku, uvlačeći posmatrača u ugaono težište slike. Tada posmatrač shvata da su zmije, kao i ostala bića, samo deo gradacijskog niza koji, ipak, ishodi vantematskim rešenjem.

Pošto je sama priroda platna da bude veštački postavljeno na beton, ono će, pre ili kasnije, ostaviti svoje zidove u konačnosti gradjevinskog završetka, a upravo će taj preljubnički čin doneti novi interpretativni ugao, svakoj narednoj pozadini sa kojom ove slike budu sjedinjene.

Zmije su ovde da uplaše bogove, ali ne i likovni put slobodan u svojoj konotativnoj slojevitosti. Ovim Simonida Rajčević integriše zapadno putovanje sa istočnim prostorom. Na toj graničnoj teritoriji bogovi su sastavni deo istočne mimetike, ali su zato njihova tela žrtve zapadne likovne gozbe koju slikarka, poput Dionosa, prinosi ničeanskoj istoriji sveta.

Marko Kostić

Tajfunskom silinom Simonida Rajčević preleće sveukupnim civilizacijskim pejsažem tragajući za suštinom ljudske telesnosti, seksualnosti, greha, tabua. Izveštaj sa svojih preleta ona je uobličila u dva slikana friza – dva monumentalna Zmijska zida.

Jedan Zmijski zid je po svojoj strukturi i kompoziciji više linearno narativan, postupan, analogan. Drugi je fragmentaran, skokovit, bliskiji digitalnom jezičkom kôdu. No, oba su žestoka u ekspresiji, dramatici, naboju, oba poseduju tenziju i napon karakterstičan za materiju pred samo pucanje i eksploziju.

Ključni elemenat ovih zidova je, naravno, zmija – mnogoznačni simbol: prvobitnog ljudskog, biblijskog greha, ali i simbol koji u sebi objedinjuje aspekte htonskog i zemaljskog, vode i vatre, negativno i pozitivno načelo, ali i principe muškog i ženskog određujući polnu dvoznačnost.

Bitnu potpornu ulogu u konstrukciji Zmijskog zida svakako ima i zid – barijera prema nepoznatom, ograničenje, prepreka, linija razdvajanja, ali i snažan nosilac civilizacijskih poruka – od Zida plača, preko Kineskog zida, do Berlinskog zida, pa do mnogih bezimenih zidova.

Ostvareni u poetskom ključu «Stvaranja sveta» (gde je implicirana kako priča o grehu, tako i priča o zmiji), sa podrazumevajućom aromom dramatike i patosa, ovi frizovi odjekuju tutnjavom i grmljavinom božjeg gneva koji je usledio počinjenju prvog ljudskog greha i koji je razorio čedan i idiličan edenski svet. Tvoreći vlastite monumentalne kompozicije Simonida Rajčević bira i oslanja se na elemente iz opštecivilizacijskog fundusa, pre svega one naglašene telesnosti i Erosa, koji podržavaju njenu misao - od antičke skulpture, preko mikelanđelovskog, elgrekovskog, rembrantovskog, rubensovskog, do heringovsko-baskijatskog slikarskog kôda, uz primese Goje i literature Borisa Vijana, pa sve do reminiscencija i citata iz Emanuele, Poslednjeg tanga u Parizu, Carstva čula, francuskih erotskih filmova. I sve to sa značajnim uplivima grafita, stripa, filmskih postupaka, rock'n'rolla... Crno, belo i crveno, nekad više crtački, nekad više slikarski, u dramatičnom vihoru Erosa i Tanatosa.

Simptomatična tačka jednog od ova dva Zmijska zida, onog kompaktnijeg narativnog toka, svakako jeste mesto gde je ostvaren rez/prelaz iz boje u crno-belo (tim višeznačnim rezom je, između ostalog, označen i prelaz sa likovnih na filmske citate). Negde na granici ta dva sveta, u bojenom polju, kao dominantna figura prepoznaje se figura jednog od Laokonovih sinova sa poznate El Grekove slike Laokon. Laokon i sinovi ili Laokonova grupa, često interpretiran predložak u skulpturi i slikarstvu  od antike do današnjih dana, otelotvorenje je mita o trojanskom svešteniku Laokonu. Na njega i njegove sinove Apolon je poslao dve zmije koje će ih posle dramatične borbe zauvek odvesti u mrak htonskog sveta. No, malo je poznato da Laokon na sebe i na svoje potomstvo Apolonov gnev nije navukao isključivo svojim učešćem u Grčko-trojanskom ratu, već i time što je mnogo ranije prekršio sveštenički zakon time što se oženio i imao sinove, i što se usudio da obljubi svoju ženu u svetilištu pred Apolonovim kipom.

Nemački arheolog i istoričar umetnosti, Johan Joakim Vinkelman, govoreći o antičkoj Laokonovoj grupi, u 18. veku, ukazuje na paradoks utiska zadivljujuće lepote dok se zapravo posmatra scena umiranja i posrnuća.  I upravo takvim suspensom Erosa i Tanatosa Simonida Rajčević objedinjuje sve aktere ova dva friza u jednu veliku Laokonovu porodicu povezanu u zmijsko klupko.

Danijela Purešević

AKRILNA POPODNEVA

Italijanska umetnost petnaestog veka, odnosno period poznatiji kao renesansa, medju ostalim korenitim promenama uvela je ljudsko telo kao efektivnu jedinicu predstavljenog prizora, priče I emocionalnog karaktera. Uprošćeno, karakter figure nije zavisio ni od fiziognomije ( individualnog karaktera), ali ni od striktnih religijskih kanona koji su konzumaciju slike predstavljali kao trenutak duhovnog uzdizanja. Slika je pre svega bila odredjena nacinom na koji se figura pokreće. Alberti će u svom Traktatu o slikarstvu napisati i sledeće: “Postoje pokreti tela : narastanje, skupljanje, oboljevanje, ozdravljenje, pokreti s jednog mesta na drugo mesto. Mi slikari koji hoćemo da pokažemo pokrete duha pokretima delova tela , koristimo samo pokretanja s jednog na drugo mesto”. Drugim rečima otkriva se da se tek relacijom jednog tela u odnosu na drugo na slici ostvaruje izraz, i time u umetnost nastupa era teatralnosti.

Međutim, “stari majstori” prizivani iz prošlosti na slikama Simonide Rajčević, nisu umetnici petnaestog, već šesnaestog, pa i sedamnaestog veka, umetnici kao što su Mikelanđelo, Karavađo, Roso, Rubens, a posebno Tintoreto i El Greko. To su umetnici kod kojih pokreti i relacije između tela nisu samo plastički znaci koji određuju kompoziciju slike kroz albertijevski model “površina-član-telo-slika”.

Kod njih je telo ekstatično, dominantno ali ranjivo, ono što uzrokuje ili predstavlja cilj božanske intervencije, telo čija je anatomija izložena deliričnom slikarskom eksperimentisanju, skraćivanjima ili dodeljenom anaturalističkom koloritu: takvo telo stavljeno u nemoguće položaje ustvari postaje i centralna metafora transformacije koju umetnost obavlja. Mikelanđelovska figura serpentinata, kao uzorone umetnosti koja se u istoriji označava kao maniristička ( I figura koju je Alberti odbacivao kaoekscesno neujednačenu jer “otkriva prednju I zadnju stranu istovremeno”, bila je mobilna forma upoređivana sa izgledom plamena , figura koja je sve manje zavisila od realnih osobina i potencijala tela a sve više od istraživanja graničnih duhovnih i fizičkih situacija u kojima ono biva predstavljeno.Ali takođe I zahvaljujući čudesnim mogućnostima, izvitoperenjima ovakve figure, prostor slike sve je manje bio pozornica a sve više specifičan prostor u kojem se zakoni gravitacije sve manje simuliraju a iluzija sve više odvija s obe imaginarne strane slikane površine.

Za razliku od slikarstva koje je u poslednjih nekoliko godina na beogradskoj sceni s razlogom privlačilo najviše pažnje – a to je takozvano “slikarstvo u prvom licu”, ego–slikarstvo u kojem se identifikacija odvija prvenstveno preko lica i mreže uzvraćenih pogleda ( i koje je u nekom svom dalekom predtekstu duboko vizantijsko) – slikarstvo Simonide Rajčević veoma odlučno i ubedljivo nameće centralnost tela i njegovih gestova kao ključnu misteriju umetnosti i  iskustva devedesetih. U ovom smislu slike starih majstora, odnosno izabrani fragmenti tih slika, služe kao tradicionalni modeli telesne afektacije koji se tehnikom akrilika ( a koji simonida koristi) prenose u svet brzih rezultata i medijske manipulativnosti. Međutim, I “zanatski” gledano, Simonidini “expres stari majstori” pokazuju da neke osobenosti njenih uzora mogu itekako da budu ponovo artikulisane u umetnosti našeg vremena. Njeno slikarstvo je punog  zamaha, “plamenih “poteza, orijentisano ka plastici figura postignutoj toplim ali I “otrovnim” koloritom, sa tek po kojom hladnom senkom. Kao takvo ono je i sveže i sasvim dovoljno “bolesno” za vreme u kom živimo. Izbor  akrilika zanimljiv je i konceptualno, jer akrilik je tehnika dvadesetog veka, boja koju je Polok prosipao po svojim platnima, boja nepogrešivo ujednačenih površina minimalnog slikarstva, ali i tehnika koju je jos dvadesetih prva počela da koristi jedna izmeštena ali uticajna grupacija meksičkih muralista. Akrilik se tako prvobitno i pojavljuje kao medijator između ogromnih površina, dominantnosto prestavljenih tela i nepikrivene socijalne angažovanoisti.

Postavka slika kojom se u prostoru galerije Zvono ostvaruje sabijena parafraza onih agresivnih slikanih komora nalik Sikstinskoj kapeli, svakako da se nadovezuje na instalaciju ove umetnice izvedenu 1995. Pod nazivom Poslednji preživeli sa Nostroma, u kojoj je savremeni SF predložak( filmmovi iz ciklusa Alien) , iskorišćen kao metaforična artikulacija kurentnih socijalnih, seksualnih i političkih odnosa, nastalih novim feminističkim teorijama i uopšte mrvljenjem partijarhata s jedne, i neizlečivim virusima i ratovima s druge strane. I u slučaju ove instalacije ( kao rezultatu savremenih umetničkih “metoda” kojima Simonida itekako vlada) i u slučaju serije slika koja je pred nama (kao rezultatu tradicionalnog slikarskog nerva), telo je fokus “aktualnog iskustva”, glas prirode koji prisustvo u kulturi izražava sopstvenom ugroženošću.

Na svakoj Simonidinoj slici nalaze se tela u pokretu preuzeta sa više predložaka, međutim ovakva kombinacija fragmenata ne poziva na dekodiranje alegorijskog značenja, karakteristično za slikarsvo osamdesetih, već stavlja u prvi plan pitanja logike prestavljanja telesnih manifestacija. Ipak, u ovom slikarstvu će zahtevni posmatrač otkriti neka “tematska” pravila, neke motive koji se uporno ponavljaju i koji su uglavnom vezani za Hristove muke, trenutke kada telo spasitelja preuzima na sebe grahe čovečansva. Međutim na Simonidinim slikama Hristovog tela nema, ono je označeno odsustvo okokojeg je vrtlog drugih tela koja gestikuliraju njegovu žrtvu. I da se vratimo na početak, u petnaesti vek kada su tela na slikama počela da se kreću, gestikuliraju i da se otvaraju ličnim imaginacijama, ali kada je figura Hrista i dalje bila nedodirljivi kanon, telo bez tela, jednom za svagda opisana zagonetka. Na svakoj atraktivnoj slici, pa i na onoj koja vrvi od investirane energije i telesne akcije, uvek postoji i ono što je odsutno, ono što i čini naš pogled aktivnim.

Branislav Dimitrijević

HARDWARE NOSTALGIJA

Estetika prvog Terminator filma struktuiranog oko mašina koje izmiču ljudskoj kontroli svakoga dana je sve manje preteći proizvod progresa a sve više romantizovana nostalgija za ljudskim verovanjem da mašinska tehnologija nezaustavljivo napreduje i da sama grandioznost teškog hardwarea ima potencijal da nagovesti snagu koja izmiče kontroli konstruktora. U odnosu na drugi film iz serije, kojim dominiraju sofisticirani kompjuterski efekti, kiber-estetika tečnog metala, sintetički materijal koji zamenjuju telesna tkiva, prvi Terminator danas deluje kao dokument o poslednjoj fazi razvoja modernizma: materijal i tehnologija dovedeni do savršenstva ali i dalje oklopljeni realnim prostorom, konvencionalnim agregatnim stanjima, uz isticanje monumentalnosti i čvrstine kao glavnih ciljeva mašinske tehnologije.

Velike mašine, velike poput kranova, izgubile su svoj preteći potencijal sa dolaskom mikro tehnologije i upravo je opsednutost mikro-dimenzionisanjem ta koja otvara  mogućnost romantizovanja starih mašina bez obzira na njihovu očiglednu utilitarnost. Od sinonima izgradnja, progres, prosperitet nije mnogo ostalo -  samo utilitarnost u okviru disciplina ili ljudskih delatnosti ( arhitektura, teška industrija) gde je veličina uslovljena objektima koji zauzimaju velike površine u prostoru. Dosledno romantizovano slikarstvo ih svodi na ljudske ( galerijske ) dimenzije. Naravno, to bi mogle da učine i digitalne tehnologije, 3D animacije, ali bi se tako konceptualizovala druga vrsta problema i implicirala patronizujuća nadmoć minijaturnih tehnologija i na svestan način dislocirao još jedan krucijalni kapacitet koji mašine poput kranova nedvosmisleno imaju. Iako su velike mašine izgubile sve osim spomeničke monumentalnosti ostaje im njihov skoro ekskluzivni kapacitet da budu instalirane u prostoru i postave instalaciju u prostoru.

Velika građevinska mašina već predstavlja instalaciju u prostoru i nepotrebno je ponavljati je kao instalaciju u galeriji. Njeno dvodimenzionalno predstavljanje postaje dokument o instalaciji- tako da se artistička intervencija pojavljuje tek pri dokumentovanju postojećeg stanja. Tako se ni pejsaž na slikama Simonide Rajčević ne pojavljuje kao samosvojan, njega konstruišu oblici kranova a diskurzivno odredjuje upotreba zlata utvrdjujući tako i odnos prema modernističkom nasledju. Za razliku od modernističkog slikarstva, ove slike ne pružaju pravu vrstu zadovoljenja: zatvorenost, balans, harmoniju. Iako postoji osećaj da su svi ovi elementi prisutni, da je dug formalističkom, klasičnom slikarstvu priznat, prisustvo zlata podseća na osećaj nelagodnosti , nelagodnosti koju Sherrie Levine u svojim “velikim zlatnim čvorovima” prepoznaje kao nelagodnu smrt modernizma.

Branislava Anđelković

ŽENSKA ZVEZDA

Simonida Rajčević :” Poslednji preživeli sa Nostroma”- instalacija

Prekrentnica u thnološkom savladavanju vaseljenskog beskraja – susret sa užasavajućom snagom, prevoren je u višeznačni mit medijske kulture. Pripovest o biću nadljudskih, preobražavajućih svojstava materije, izbila je u okrilju posade svemirskog broda Nostromo, po prvi put u filmu Alien (Ridley Scott , 1978.) Posle zaglušujućih, pomračenih enterijerskih jurcanja i otklanjanja monstruma u poslednjem trenutku, jedini preživeli je – ona. Kroz lik iste glumice, ponovno stupanje pred razorno divljanje od iste vrste, jeste saznavanje i bioloških zakonitosti bića pramajčinske moći u verziji Alien II ( James Cameron, 1989.), ali i borba sa njenim nezaustavljivim reproduktivnim čudima iz stravičnih, kolektivnih uslova svemirske kažnjeničke kolonije, nalikujući na zemaljski koncentracioni logor u filmu Alien III( David Fincher, 1992.). Uspešno savladavanje tekvih situacija podseća na elementarnu dinamiku snalaženja u svetu – umeće ili umetnička ambijentalna celina podstaknuta filmovima, otud poseduje čaroliju koja objedinjuje raskoš delotvornih moći. Likovna predstava ne računa samo na galerijski enterijer u stupanju pred trodimenzionalnu senzaciju. Autorka je podvrgnula, po receptima igre sa prividom i kadriranjem, dakle – vizuelnim udarom pop kulture, i četvrtu dimenziju, podrazumevajući učešće u trajanju tokom prilaženja, saznavanja i otkrivanja instalacije Poslednji preživeli sa Nostroma. Zagonetna moć uvedena je kroz likovnu dimenziju suprotnih elemenata:  džinovsku konstrukciju  visećih pravougaonih metalnih ploča – po površinama obradjenih materijalnih tragova ulja , emajla i bitulita, i suprotnim likovnim izvođenjem- u morfološkom iznenađenju. Da li se radi o sustretu dva, u praksi suprotstavljena umetnička koncepta? Sustret sa zgusnutim prostorom galerije u vidu hodnika je i duhovita jeza savremene strategije izmicanja usled okružujućih, neretko m onstruoznih neprijatnosti. Sprečavajuća gustina i masivnost ravnih ploča sugeriše površinske ponore smisla u tajanstvu koje ne dopušta preciznija tumačenja. Međutim, etimon Nostromo, potiče iz književnosti, od istoimenog pustolovnog dela Džozefa Konrada. Jezički razložen naslov u moguću deobu “naš-monstrum”, ubraja se u elemente istraživanja svireposti i očajanja, koje je isti posac sproveo u noveli Srce tame, nastale na samom izmaku prošlog veka. Zavodljivost instalacije nije reakciona nostalgija za kosmičkom borbom ili signalizacija dolaska martijarhata trećeg milenijuma -  u pitanju je opražajna  predstava senzibiliteta sadašnjeg skončanja i pocetka XXI veka, za čiji je doživljaj, u dinamici uzmicanja i izmicanja, neizbežno lucidno umetničko postavljanje zamki.

Nikola Šuica