Curator
Ana Kršljanin in Pia Miklič
This time, the Y Gallery space hosts the Serbian author Joškin Šiljan, whose gestures are characterized by intense colour surfaces, letter phrases and a free interweaving of lines. His working method is often described as automatic drawing. The resulting works contain lightness of being and wit as an escape from the ordinary and conventional. Through modern artistic expression, he seeks to articulate the unconscious, to capture the indeterminacy hidden in a dream or vision, and to show boundless freedom. His painting is profoundly intuitive, carrying courage and uniqueness, which places him in a line with the leading authors of the world art scene. With a utopian – but fresh for the Slovenian space – attitude, he takes on a role that is part of his being, he reacts to (self-)imposed problems and waits for new ones to arise. He is a scientist, engineer and creator of a carefree world where optimism, smiles, dance and joy reign. He is an artist who portrays our inner drives – those little screws and joints, without which our bodily machines of flesh and bone would have collapsed long ago.
His art is fluid, mobile and alive. Its nature is mutable, enriched with an endless expanse of shapes and colours. It is energetic and wild, unstoppable. The images continue and live before the viewer's eyes – they are anything but static. The exhibition, entitled Agile Images, deliberately preserves the semantic authenticity of the Serbian expression, which points to the omnipresent vitality, mobility and freedom in the author's works. In the context of Šiljan's oeuvre, freedom means being unattached to a motif, form, or linguistic formulation that is characterized by sincere recklessness and spontaneity at the moment of creation.
While the author's earlier series were mainly focused on an anthropomorphic form, condensed scenes and numerous colour applications, the selected series deviates from this. The new painting becomes softer and more impasto, while spatiality and airiness take the place of the earlier horror vacui as the former leading features of the artist's works. The new forms that appear in Agile Images are visually connected to machines and circuits, but they are not dehumanized, metallic or robotic; they are delicate and fragile, even utopian in nature. Perhaps they are best described as kinetic sculpture, despite the painterly format. They act playfully, and in their lightness and subtle mutability they can be perceived as moving gently in the wind, like the mobiles of Alexander Calder. A closer look at the shapes, colours and texts reveals that each part serves its own purpose. Other machines include an artificial intelligence that imparts a cheerful and positive worldview, a timeless machine to accelerate reincarnation, an apparatus for grinding harmonious relationships and a semi-automatic stapler for attaching happy smiles to people's faces.
Joškin Šiljan (1953) was born as Nebojša Stojković in Pirot, Serbia, but is known in the art
world by his artist’s name. He has been actively engaged in painting since 1987 and presenting his work at official exhibitions since 1994, and thus belongs to the generation of artists that formed in the domestic art scene in the 1990s. He is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions and is one of the best known and most active artists on the Serbian art scene. He has exhibited in many important institutions in Serbia and abroad, which has also brought him international recognition. His works are housed in museums and private collections all over the world. He lives and works in Grdelica.
