‘Neretva’
Edin Vejselović’s new exhibitions of painting and video, ‘Neretva’, opened at the end of last week at Galerija Java on Titova. The front gallery space is filled with over half a dozen subtle and seductive ‘self-portraits’ of the famous river, which turn out to be an intriguing mixture of traditional landscape painting, land art and action art.
Critical to this exhibition’s realisation was the carefully staged process by which the paintings were made. They were made in the open air by the river; the artist painstakingly tried to find the precise emerald tone for which the Neretva is famous, and then applied that to the canvas. Once this was done, these raw materials were put in the river, which acted upon them, in the manner of the River producing its own portrait; finished, the work was removed from the water, and made ready for the exhibition.
It would be possible to read this exhibition in terms of traditional landscape, but this would limit the scope of one’s response. The finished paintings- the triptych in the front space of the gallery really is captivating and invites repeated looking-certainly stand alongside other examples of contemporary landscape painting, such as those by John Virtue.
But traditional landscape painting, in its attempt to capture the ‘spirit of place’ or ‘the timeless spiritual values of (whatever) nation’, fundamentally is about an individual artist ordering and composing nature, in order to impose his own (dis)ordered vision on the spectator. Quite the reverse is going on here. For sure, the River Neretva with it’s amazingly luminous colours at certain times of day, and with its central role in the different stages of BiH history, is a key marker of the contingent historical narratives and identities of this country; but, if anything, the artist reduces himself to a very minimal role here. These works reveal an artist who wants us to focus on his subject and its contemporary situation, rather than on his own creative personality.
The nature of these compositions leave chance and random circumstance playing as important a role in the finished work, as the artist himself. There is the sense that a good proportion of the artistic personality has been ‘washed away’ by the constant movement of the river. In this sense, it is possible to draw interesting parallels between these instances of landscape painting, and both Land Art- a direct intervention in nature then left to the mercy of natural processes following the departure of the artist (as practised annually by Ars Kozara)- and site-specific performance. The process by which the paintings were made was, just as in performance art, documented carefully and preserved for the future. There is more than a sly echo of Jackson Pollock’s famous stripped-to-the-waist open-air ‘gesture painting’ in 50s America, and these contemporary photos of the artist at work on the river.
Traditional landscape art, if any thing, is noted for its political conservatism. These landscapes have a much sharper critical edge to them. Vejselović’s work was sponsored in part by the local branch of the WWF, which is active in campaigning against future environmentally ruinous hydroelectric schemes on the river. In this sense, then, this show is a snapshot of the Neretva before it becomes a contested site of protest, perhaps a contrast between the ‘eternal’ nature of the river and the fleeting political forms of the day. This partnership between NGO, gallery and artists, we are told, is set to step up in the next year. If the results of this visually seductive, genre-crossing show are anything to go by, it will be an interesting relationship to watch develop.
‘Neretva AUTOPORTRET’
Jon Blackwood
Process and makeing the painting on the Neretva river, Mostar 2012 Acrylic on canvas, 120cm x 100cm
Exhibition view, Galerija Java, Sarajevo, 2012
Exhibition view, Galerija Java, Sarajevo, 2012
Exhibition detail view, Galerija Java, Sarajevo, 2012
Exhibition detail view, Galerija Java, Sarajevo, 2012
Exhibition view, Acrylic on canvas 8m x 1,20m, Galerija Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo, 2013
Exhibition view, Acrylic on canvas 8m x 1,20m, Galerija Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo, 2013
EDIN Vejselović EDO “Neretva”
World non-governmental environmental organizations WWF and “Java” Gallery of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo, and they want to encourage artists to start the production of socially engaged art that focus on the nature of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the case of this first exhibition, which should open the way to the track or hint of such a socially-engaged artistic practice in our country, it’s about turning public attention to the negative consequences of new hydropower projects in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as raising awareness of the environmental threat posed by these projects are for local people and nature in the downstream areas of the river Neretva.
To the realization of this exhibition has been co Bojan Stojanovic, who is in charge of communications for the regional water issues in the WWF in Croatia and Damir Niksic, artists and curators ‘JAVA’ galleries after their decision to support joint performance and outstanding art work Edin Vejselović.
“Edin Vejselović has previously developed a very interesting painting where the artist’s role is reduced to a minimum: the role of agents, who assist nature in making self-portraits in which she is a practical and symbolic way to manifest his artistic nature. This strategy, this behavior is things site-specific performance that results in self-portraits of the rivers, and so it happens that the first artist to enter the riverbed and pick the point at which recognizes the distinctive color of the river. Having your hand in a bowl, mix up the basic acrylic paint and get the exact shade of the river at certain specified place at a certain time of day – it comes out to the coast where the paint coated surface impregnated canvases stretched on a wooden frame. inflicted While color is fresh – the artist returns to the previous position and down with his face to screen about half an inch below the surface. river on its course dissolves and removes shade caused characteristic speed and the way it moves. flow of time is equal to the flow of the river and during a certain time at a certain place during a certain river – slowly created a self-portrait. analyzing and knowing the characteristics of color and viscosity as compared to the current water, the artist decides the point where the screen rises out of the water before the river washes away the color caused entirely. At that point, we get a self-portrait of the river, the artistic expression of nature that enabled the artist, that is. whom he assisted.
Delighted with this basic approach and thinking of painting, nature, art and the artistic in nature, or rather, the nature of art, I suggested to Edin that his “alchemical art” into the service of art and engaged in cooperation with WWF made a series of “self-portraits” Neretva, which will appear in the “Tell” before the river itself and change its nature. Edo at the end of the summer he spent a few weeks in Mostar working on this series of images to form a new exhibition, “NERETVA self-portrait.”
I hope this is the first of many exhibitions that Edo can make in this way and on this subject, and in this context, and with these partners. I also hope that others will follow and art exhibition that celebrates nature, which is turned to nature, but the team and nothing less socially engaged, but, on the contrary.
Curator Damir Niksic
Edin Vejselović Edo 