Future of Melancholia
Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić & Rodoljub Čolaković
MoCAB, Belgrade 

Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić & Rodoljub Čolaković
Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (MoCAB)
Rodoljuba Čolakovića 2, 11000 Belgrade

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 resulting works follow a narrative structure that is sometimes very bleak and unfathomable, but can also be humorous and hopeful. This melancholic sentiment is the focus of this exhibition, which presents historical, modernist, and contemporary positions from both Serbia and Austria both in Belgrade and Graz in three chapters shown almost simultaneously: at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić & Roduljub Čolaković and Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art) and at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark (HK Styria) in Graz.

At the Gallery-Legacy of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, contemporary Austrian positions are presented together with works by the pioneer of surrealism Susanne Wenger, whose work was shown at the 60th Venice Biennale last year. This exhibition at the Gallery-Legacy particularly aims at a new appraisal of Wenger, showing two series: Traumgesichte (Dream Visions) (1943 – 44), pencil drawings depicting surrealist animals, and Icons of Sadness (1993 – 94), Wenger created after her long spiritual sojourn in Nigeria.

In the first and second stories of the Gallery-Legacy works by younger Austrian artists are presented, including Kamilla Bischof, Flora Hauser, Katharina Höglinger, Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Nanna Kaiser, Matthias Noggler, Maruša Sagadin, Anna Schachinger, Klaus Schuster, and Lisa Slawitz. These artists take diverse perspectives on the theme of melancholy and invite us into what seem to be inner worlds. These neo-surrealist works each stand for themselves, while often drawing on the legacy of Wenger. The works all develop their own narratives and they all have the courage to go new ways.