EXHIBITION

The Garden of Delights

Art Gallery Cultural Center of Belgrade, 08/28/2014 - 09/20/2014

ABOUT

Mladen Miljanović on his first solo exhibition in Belgrade will exhibit works titled The Garden of Delights. These works were previously presented at the 55th Biennale di Venezia, where the artist represented Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The idea behind the complete project of the artist is that of unbridled people’s desires, of personal truths of the collective absurdity of the contemporaneity, as perceivable across Bosnia. The conceptual framework of the project is reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch’s famous Renaissance triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1500), and it is firmly rooted in today’s physical world of common people’s various experiences, as the most authentic and the most banal realities of post-transition society. Mystical and provocative even for today’s interpreters, the triptych by Hieronymus Bosch was the initial inspiration for the work of Mladen Miljanović; rather complex and materialised in a way which is, by comparison with contemporary art techniques, quite non-standard and atypical, his ensemble consists of drawings engraved on marble slabs, a stonework tradition commonly used in tombstone decoration in the Balkans.

While realizing his concept, Miljanović made a video to be used as an accompaniment to the exhibit, which he called Sweet Harmony of the Absurd and in which members of the Banja Luka Philharmonic simultaneously play their favorite pieces. The multiplicity of this melodious plurality, tinted with personal wishes, interests and lifestyles as found in society, reflects the heterogeneity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its cultural dynamics, at times synchronous and stimulating, at others crippling and disasterous to utter ruin. Sweet Harmony of the Absurd is an authentic representation of the ambivalent makeup of Bosnian and Herzegovinian society, marked by conflicting sentiments and attitudes. Integrated with The Garden of Delights, it rounds off Mladen Miljanović’s peculiar artistic discourse, strongly marked by an awareness of constant affirmation, according to which human creativity is best stimulated by desire.

 

The project is implemented with the partnership of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska in Banja Luka, with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Srpska. 

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