Cool School
Tour for students
Guided tours through the exhibition Future of Melancholia
Admission for the exhibition is free, Attendance: 1 € per person
duration: ca. 45 min
group size: up to 20 people
Also available in German
Registration: cf@halle-fuer-kunst.at; 0316 740084
The exhibition Future of Melancholia considers melancholy as a state of mind that matches the complex times in which we are living. This is a phenomenon and a reaction to the challenges of populist developments around the world, in the form of a withdrawal from political and public life and a turn to the private realm. The exhibition particularly looks at how artists explore this heavy-heartedness and introspection that also reflect an inner conflict between tradition and progress. Often, they turn to the surreal and dream-like, which offer opportunities to address the interplay between inner sentiment and the state of the outside world.
The exhibition at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark (HK Styria) in Graz presents three generations of artists from Serbia, exploring the continuities of surrealist imagery from the 1920s to the present, with historical positions from the surrealist group around Marko Ristić, Vane Bor, Radojica Živanović Noe, and others, who were the founders of surrealism in Serbia and who interacted internationally with other surrealist artists. From the 1950s to 1990s various positions emerged with profoundly individual approaches and poetics presented in the practices of artists such as Ilija Bašičević, Ljiljana Blaževska, Olga Jevrić, Bogoljub Jovanović, Radomir Reljić, Leonid Šejka, Sava Sekulić, and Milica Zorić. Through figuration or abstract forms, a metaphysical view, elements of the surreal, manifestations steeped in allegory, or the exploration of the relationship between spirit and matter, these artists produced unique renderings of immediate reality and the experiences of the world. The exhibition also presents contemporary Serbian artists, who, like their Austrian contemporaries whose works are shown in Belgrade, use allegories of the surreal and nostalgia that envision fantastic, atmospheric, and sometimes bleak worlds. Like their predecessors, this generation, represented here by Lidija Delić, Biljana Đurđević, Milena Dragicevic, Marko Obradović, and Saša Tkačenko, can also be described as idiosyncratic – a generation that, in new contexts, connects with other artists across borders in order to enter into a supranational and multilateral dialogu