May 8, 6 pm
Kuća Legata / Heritage House
Knez Mihailova 46, Belgrade
The encounter with oneself is an inevitable act in any artistic creation. For a young person, that encounter is vague, uncertain and often elusive. Even during his studies at the Academy of Arts in Belgrade, Matej Milenković often searched for his own self in an attempt to understand, define and creatively present it. Through a system of trial and error, he came up with interesting and bold solutions that always revealed little, but suggested much more. Following the premise of the famous ancient poet Horace that the image is poetry without words, his photographs communicate on an associative, but never descriptive level. Most of the photographic series are accompanied by his poetic writings, which, along with the visual rhythm of the photographs, create the unity of image and word, sublimating a small narrative – something like a film sketch. Part of the exhibition is a video work for which the music was written by Aleksandar Ranđelović.
Matej also borrows fiction from film language, which he uses to talk about each of us in his series of photographs Astronaut, in search of the invisible, inaccessible, beyond the rational understanding of his own self, which tries to realise its existence within itself and the world around us. That endeavor in the beginning was doomed to failure because the realisation itself would mean the end. The end of the search, the question, the path. Isolated in a spacesuit, listening to his own breath, narrowed vision and limited movements, Astronaut moves in his own world, but is still deeply envious of everything that surrounds him, of everything that addresses him. Matej reduces this environment to two primary aspects – nature and faith. On the given and the culture. On what makes us human.
Curated by Ivana Tomanović
Professor, Academy of Arts, Novi Sad
IMPORTANT:
Please note that due to the Covid-19 situation nobody can enter the Gallery without wearing a mask as required by the Rep of Serbia regulations.
Visiting hours:
Tue – Fri / 14 – 19h
Sat – Sun / 12 – 15h
