"52 square meters" is an exhibition-collage which brings together three works conceived around the themes of the abstract image, creating a compact spatial unit. The exhibition is part of a series of works in which I use the collage technique as a unifying medium of artistic research. It is about exhausting the formal possibilities of combining different materials - in this case, colors, textiles, brushstrokes, paper and objects. I use collage as a technique for exploring the surface by layering it, and what interests me is the constant correlation of the elements used to build a collage, elements that change the surface, the image and the meaning. While it is possible to recognize elements of objective reality and human figures, the forms and shapes are mostly abstract and geometric. With their abstractness, they prompt us to imbue the image with different historical, political and artistic references and narratives.

Orientation in 100 Revolutions
with Bojan Đordev, painting reproduced on textile (100m2),
slats, leather straps, 2017

The painting and its artistic references examine the way in which an abstract image becomes additionally signified and then over-read by other systems of signs and knowledge. The painting is part of the eponymous performance structure in which it functions as a performative object, an initiator of performative activity whose potential lies in its ability to cover other objects in the exhibition/performance space. This action can be additionally interpreted within the framework of the two textual additions. They are a chronological-geographical-historical list of revolutions and social unrest that have occurred in the past hundred years, and a fragment from Oskar Davičo's novel “Poem“ which lists various groups, class positions and natural entities whose action and critical perspective are necessary for there to be rebellion.

"Orientation in 100 Revolutions" migrates through different artistic contexts. It has been exhibited in the gallery/museum framework, in the exterior, while in this edition it appears in an apartment, a private exhibition space – thereby considering the different places of the idea of revolutionary reflection. The title of the exhibition, "52 square meters", directly refers to the square footage of the exhibition space and the dimensions of the compressed painting.

Three Forms on a Plush Base
Two collages (50x70cm) and a drawing
ink on paper (27x36cm), 2018

The work is conceived around the image and the way it is understood in different socio-political contexts. Through the work and its descriptively formal title, I think about the abstract image, the social narratives surrounding it, our positions in front of it, and in general, whether it is possible to make, look at, understand, and how, an image that we formally call abstract. The collages and the drawing placed on the plush raise the question of whether it is possible, in the time of media culture saturated with images of the body, figure and action, to look at an abstract image without interpreting it as going hand in hand with the comfort of bourgeois art, but perhaps as showing a trace of the body – the performative trace of fingers on the plush, an imaginary map of the world, a geographical and political consolidation or division.

Old Things, work in progress
Installation consisting of a collage,
colored papers on a felt base and a chair (6 papers 50x70cm), 2022

This installation combines a chair found in the space as a place from which to panoramically observe the dramaturgy of the exhibition space, and a series of colored papers - the sequence of which ends with a collage of torn papers. With this version of Old Things, the latest work of the three exhibited in “52 square meters“, I supplement and continue the cycle of research of the interpretation of artistic work in different exhibition contexts (public, temporary, private, interior and exterior), some phases of which also had names that clearly indicated the context, such as “Cultural Center“ (Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade 2021/2), “Pavilion“ (Belgrade Youth Center Gallery, Belgrade, 2017) and others.