Vesna Bukovec

Between the real and reality (topography of private/public space)

Exhibition: Between the real and reality (topography of private/public space)
Location: Gallery Third Belgrade, Serbia
Date: October 5–20, 2012

Curator: Jelena Veljković (SRB)

Artists: Dušica Drazić (SRB), Irena Kelečević (SRB), Ivan Petrović (SRB), Mladen Bundalo (BiH), Mirjana Boba Stojadinovic (SRB), Lia Lapithi (CYP), Hristina Ivanoska (MKD), Raeda Saadeh (ISR), Saša Tkačenko (SRB), Slobodan Stošić (SRB), Vesna Zarev (SRB), Žolt Kovač (SRB), Ministarstvo prostora (SRB), KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanič) (SLO), Anja Medved (SLO), Polonca Lovšin (SLO), Jasna Hribernik & Zmago Lenardič (SLO), Tanja Lažetić & Dejan Habicht (SLO)

About the exhibition

“Personal and cultural identity is bound up with place; a topo-analysis is one exploring the creation of self- identity through place. Geographical experience begins in places, reaches out to others through spaces, and creates landscapes or regions for human existence.”
Christopher Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments

The exhibition aims in conditions of wider understanding of the gallery space of Third Belgrade to bring together works of local, regional and international artists with a focus on the work related to geographic experience, specific mechanisms and strategies that could reinterpret, restore, question or emphasize the unique character of a particular space.
In establishing a broader framework of the exhibition I used the dialectical theory of space based on the analysis of urban phenomena by introducing the principle of polarity. The first in a series of pairs of contrarieties is already listed in the subtitle of the exhibition (private/public) around which the other bipolar relationships are in radial positioning: the relationship between nature and culture, the natural and artificial environment, the relationship between center and periphery; correlation between reality and possibilities of democratic action in public space, subject and object in the field of spatial relationships and visual habits; then about determinism and freedom, collective and individual perceptions of urban and natural toponyms.
In the constellations of irreversible changes in character and structure of cities and natural resources as the primary places for democracy, satisfaction and safety, the uprising question is: How individuals or groups can manage to find place of persisting the processes of neo-liberal economy in the situation of various daily pressures – a place that can offer shelter/distance from the new system of ideology, economic and social limitations?
By conducting research of this type and moving through different spaces artists and cultural workers constitute through the medium of street and guerrilla art, paintings, photographs, installations, documentations and video work, the capacity and flexibility of the existing system, as well as different ways of delivering within a given cultural milieu. In the frame of the exhibition a current phenomena within the context of finding a private-public space through kinesthetic relationship between the observer, place and environment are located with a unique artistic topoanalysis. In the space between the real and specific realities, the viewer is offered the possibility of moving in various routes. This kind of stratification and dynamization of gazes initiates an active position in the process of reviewing the collective and intimate experience, through the mental and spatial summaries of certain factors, either in the shoes of tourists or regular urban walkers.

Jelena Veljković

www.trecibeograd.com

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KOLEKTIVA art group (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanič) participates with the video Special Place in the City – Graz (2006). Curator Jelena Veljković included in her exhibition the entire program Video in Progress 2: City Perspectives, curated by Metka Zupanič and Vesna Bukovec.