Uroš Đurić, The Last Contemporary Art Exhibition
Uroš Đurić
The Last Contemporary Art Exhibition
8.10 – 5.11. 2020.
Art Gallery – Cultural Centre of Belgrade
Uroš Đurić, present on the art scene for three decades, has never followed any established rules or guidelines nor belonged to any art movements. Back in 1994, when he, together with Stevan Markuš, wrote the Autonomism Manifesto, Đurić laid the foundations of his ideology and since then he has been developing his expression and poetics, faithful exclusively to his own beliefs about art that reflects the (class) society in which it is created. Đurić’s works, even when created in one of the most traditional media – painting – always reflect the contemporary moment and refer to the current socio-political situation, class inequality, existential problems, which seem to be not only contemporary but also timeless. The Last Contemporary Art Exhibition will present to the Belgrade audience, for the first time, Đurić’s works from the Art for Class Society Series, started in 2012, together with his latest works. The intriguing title of the exhibition raises numerous questions about the phenomenon of the contemporary and the contradictions that the expression “contemporary art” involves. How to define contemporaneousness, how long does it last, when does it end and what comes after?
The artist himself says, “Contemporary art contains the germ of its own death, but since there is nothing better in sight, it is renewed. Like capitalism, it goes through cycles of growth and collapse, which serves as a mechanism of self-correction to ensure the lasting survival of the system.”