… For us, experience is undoubtedly the most important thing, as well as what we as individuals learn from it … Someday you will free yourself from your limitations and you will know where you have to go. We will face surprises, some will make the decision to start over … (Walter Gropius, excerpts from addressing students).
Experience is something that bears witness to the moments experienced, the concentrated memory of the senses, which triggers memories, thoughts, feelings and leads to the need for new spaces. In the process, time is flowing and the space is open, and it is only upon our presence that it will be time to stop and testify about it. It is at this point that I would look for the background of Vanja’s need to embark on a new field of artistic expression, the artistic design of the interior of being on paper. For the first time, the Launched Spots exhibit opens a field for wider communication with the viewer. How and why do spaces move, what are the spaces and where do they lead?
There is always something that drives it. The conceptual or theoretical determination of a work of are is directly related to the artistic process and only in direct interaction with it does it make sense. As Vanja herself says, she extends her expression to the words “In space, outside space. I embrace everything and I am a part of everything ”(Rumi). I was triggered by the coincidence of the encounter, the moment of recognizing the sensibilities when the idea of realizing the first solo exhibition came up. In this introduction to her work, in addition to precise technical visual components, I recognized the delicacy of depth of thought, the concentrated sublimation of multiple forms of art, the architecture of consciousness, the musical sensibility of experience and the precisely organized whole of artistic breadth.
It is a long way from start to finish, from idea to realization. Painting is the process of crossing that path and it is up to the individual to determine how to shape it. When thoughts and emotions are triggered, it is difficult to know where to go, and simplicity is complete. Visible reduction of spatial determination and form, invisible width of strokes of combination of shower and acrylic, immediacy of encounter with paper, light effects of color before some color applied, reduced relationships within geometrically divided newly created images draws in the world behind, a confetti background of artistic sensibility of the process of creation.
The spaces that Vanja has occupied in this whole are not only hers. Although these are the inner and personal spaces of raw emotion that she has shaped on the whiteness of the paper and enclosed within the frames, they are not just hers. These are spaces of artistic infinity (inspired by the famous Miller: “Art is infinite”). With this exhibition, the paintings of ENTRANCE, I DARED, A YEAR IN THE LIFE, VISION, CHELLENGE, PRESENCE, PURE … she opened them, shared them with the observer, left the field of interaction and called for new thoughts to be triggered, and where she would take that path it depends on the experience …
Biljana Jotic, art historian
