diSTRUKTURA – Opening exhibition November 26th 2015

diSTRUKTURA

Opening exhibition : November 26th 2015 at 19:00

WORDS OF LANDSCAPE

“But on the inside, no borders…” Jean Tardieu

The main theme of the latest works of the artistic couple diSTRUKTURA is landscape, urban landscape as a constructed image, geographical term, social category. The works were created in the period 2013-2015 and are part of an ongoing project where Central European landscape is recognizable as the main theme. Although geographically determined, this term can be understood beyond it, as a paradigm of our movement in the process of identifying our past and anticipating our future: cultural, social, political… diSTRUKTURA uses obsessive examination of the possibilities of landscape as a defined space as a method to explain all the conditions and consequences of interpretation of the mentioned term – Central European landscape. The justification of their procedure is in the origin of the places (geographical term) and the pattern of the spaces they come from. In search of a perfect, precise, well defined landscape, the artists in their joint actions put an emphasis on the landscape as a constructed space.

When we talk about the landscape in the work of the artistic couple diSTRUKTURA, we do not mean showing landscape as a classical painter’s theme, but as constructed spaces that have a defined structure. We talk about a city not just as an urban substance, but as a space of a shaped social fabric, as well. Also, we mean cultural, political, economic landscapes, urban architectural wholes, ecological communities, geographical maps… all those (un)limited structures that – by their dimensions – indicate immeasurability (unlimited duration), indefiniteness (unlimited movement), reproducibility (unlimited choice).

The works are realized in various media: painting, photography, video – although photography is the medium most often used by diSTRUKTURA in their projects – as if they want, through media diversity, to emphasize the diversity of landscapes as given, yet uncertain and variable structures. Observing the works, we talk about landscape as though it were a picture, representation. We talk about indentedness, division into tiny, miniature fields that remind us of a digital image. This pixelization warns us that we are deep into the 21st century, in that very time when man is alienated from the space although he is physically in it, belongs to it, moves, marks it. How else when our perception today is conditioned by digital media.

These works are also examples of a continuous deliberation about the space that surrounds us and reflects us, both outer and inner space, about space as a (non)variable category. The intimate geography, which we master in moving through the selected area, directs us to identify, investigate, interpret its characteristics, givens, clear geometric statements. Despite its estrangement, this space – such as it is and in which we are – is yet not foreign or unknown to us to make us wonder, as Paul Virilio, “at which point our city reveals its face? »

Aleksandra Estela Bjelica Mladenovic
Translated by:  Vesna Strika