The modern age is a time we live in, predetermined by socio-historical turning points that have led to the transformation of consciousness in the limitless choices available and imposed. In a sea of information, each individual swims in the pursuit of his or her own response. In this connection, this exhibition brings together the works of two artists, Marija Tošković and Marija Milinković, with the aim of reconciling different artistic responses to the same theme, identifying themselves in contemporary space and society.
Both artists thematically address the issue of the contemporary being, the individual in the constant struggle of the spirit of perfect existence, emotion and raid, doubt and faith, individual and collective, absolute and dual, local and global, subject and individual. The specificity of the exhibition concept is reflected in the merging of different, practically opposite approaches to visual identification through drawing on paper. As Marija Milinkovic moves from the objective point of seeking identity in relation to the outside world, moving from the city as an environment of human cognition, Marija Toskovic examines external projections of identity, inner being and subjectivity of experiencing oneself in self – photography, the so-called “selfie” and produced narcissism.
“Finding out about the diversity of artistic expressions is the safest and simplest busola on the disturbed open-air of contemporary art,” wrote Miodrag B. 5 decades ago, in the post-war era, which left a legacy of a completely new form of “humanism” today, the role of the man from whom everything starts and drives everything. Including the relation to art and the artist practically imposes the answer to the question why the search for identity is accompanied by an exhibition through two rather than one artistic personality.
Marija Milinković objectifies the vision and places the contents in the frames of geometric forms that multiply, mirror each other, agree or arise from each other. Balanced and technical moves, contrasts and pronounced voluminousness add to the atmosphere of objectification, even at the moment of the inclusion of human figures, in the same technical equilibrium achieves the dynamics and charge of the moment. On the other hand, Marija Tošković continuously expresses the dynamics of personality and visualizes the knowledge of narcissism in man. Approaching a carefully strong feeling deforms the figural form, through the interrupted relationship of line and color. Determining the move, the line is not clear and continuous, it is impermanent, does not close the form, but opens it and releases the dynamics of the blurred shades of the reduced palette. While in the projections of the geometric cities of one artist, the atmosphere of the present is clearly visible, in boundless spatial whiteness, the other artists, whose forms are drowned as individuals, feel indifferent to time.
Biljana Jotic, art historian
