Everyday Banalities • Sara Pantović and Senka Trivunac
Artget Gallery, Trg Republike 5/1
25. 1 – 24. 2. 2024
Miha Colner, Artistic Director of the Artget Gallery for 2024
The first exhibition in the 2024 program of Artget Gallery showcases the works of Senka Trivunac and Sara Pantović, in a dialogue. Both artists are profoundly interested in visual representations of their immediate surroundings and the significance of appearances in a world dominated by the visual media. Their photographs subtly display the banalities of everyday experience in the period of late capitalism, reflecting on phenomena such as materialism and consumerism, high expectations, and transactional relationships.
The exhibition showcases seemingly intuitive snapshots that represent everyday experience which is a result of complex processes that constitute what we call Zeitgeist. It seems that each time, and each generation, has a specific and unique experience of cultural codes, social formulas, and sets of values. If anything, the first two decades of the 21st century were characterized by the abundance of everything – a deluge of information, images, and products. Senka Trivunac thus constantly contemplates how an image inhabits a space, and what is the relationship between the two in the public sphere. To reflect on the outside world she makes snapshots of structures or situations that appear to be exceptionally ordinary and familiar. Her pictures showcase the artificial nature of the world in which images of things seem more real than things themself. Sara Pantović on the other hand takes photographs that are much more sober and unembellished. It is as if they represent a return to the real since she deliberately records the invisible side of the stylized world of appearances: advertisements, public statements, and decorations that are products of current cultural norms. Her pictures showcase many sides of the same coin, the world that is often multifaceted, complex, absurd, and banal. Differently both artists reflect on the cacophony of images that one is being exposed to in everyday situations.
Biographies:
Senka Trivunac (1984) is an artist and photographer who works across different media but currently her central tool is photography. She graduated from photography at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Athens, Greece, and from sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. In her practice she is particularly interested in recording places and situations that she is exposed to, and exploring visual representations of the modern world. She lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia.
Sara Pantović (1998) is a photographer who works across different genres, from documentary to conceptual photography. She graduated (BA) from photography and visual communications at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In her practice she focuses on documentary snapshots of her immediate surroundings as well as conceptually-based photographic projects. She lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia.
