Mechanisms of melancholy and tampering with representations of reality
The Swiss-Serbian artist and art critic Ana Vujic has long been reflecting on social criticism, urbanism and street art as well as scrutinising media representation of socio-economic realities and conflicts. Preferably, she goes about this artistically with found material and coarse instruments, in this particular case working on especially large formats and in stark contrasts of black and white.
Deeper motivations of the artist are a search for truth, the questioning of representation and laying bare sinister states of affairs in the current crises and the corresponding emotions and emotional denials. These interferences and representations of images of a society in crisis address emotions of desperation and hope, hopelessness and anger alike and culminate in an Alfons Mucha-evoking allegory of melancholia as “the West”, tired and passive, wearily fallen asleep in front of a newspaper or TV screen.
In the contemporary art world, Ana Vujic's is an incredibly refreshed outlook on the role of art in society and a strong statement as to how art can process and transform individual and collective emotions into images, thereby allowing and enabling repressed reactions to take sometimes loud, sometimes melancholy shape.
Sibylle Sunda
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Ana Vujic and Luca Schenardi Showcase their Art at Gallery Daeppen:
This World of Lies Will Never Be My Truth
(extract)
Best known for her black and white figurative paintings, Ana Vujic art deals with a variety of issues which are burdening modern life. On the other hand, Luca Schenardi art explores the absurdities of Teletext transcriptions. The work of these two artists will soon be on view in two separate exhibitions at Gallery Daeppen. Titled This World of Lies Will Never Be My Truth, the exhibition by Ana Vujic deals with the mechanisms of melancholy and tampering with representations of reality. The exhibition Meyer spricht von Gratiskaffee (Meyer Calls It Free Coffee) by Luca Schenardi will feature a new selection of illustrated Teletext quotations.
Literally screaming farewell to freedom and people’s happiness, the work of Ana Vujic is a daring tribute to a seemingly non-flawed and fun consumer society. She is mainly focused on social criticism, urbanism and street art, as well as scanning media representations of socio-economic realities and conflicts. Working with found material and coarse instruments, she creates large-format pieces in stark contrasts of black and white. Always searching for the truth and questioning the representation of the world around us, she aims to lay bare the sinister state of affair in the current social and political crisis. As the crisis is always accompanied by corresponding emotions and emotional denials, she deals with desperation and hope, hopelessness and anger, culminating in melancholia.
The work of Ana Vujic provides a fresh outlook onthe art’s role responsibility in transforming individual and collective emotions into images, allowing for the repressed reactions to take whether loud or melancholic shape. By collecting absurd transcriptions, Luca Schenardi manages to capture fragments that seem to convey uncanny truths, bearing the eery resemblance to the everyday news headlines regarded as “serious”.