The fact that Draganа Kuprešanin’s PhD project “Invisible Wave”, prepared at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, marked so much of the past and current years in many segments, winning awards within the various disciplines of the contemporary art scene. It testifies that this is one of the most representative works from the entire production of contemporary visual arts in this period.
Starting from the premise of the realization of the work that will be available to the visually impaired, the artist has opened many fields of contemporary art book, as a significant, comprehensive and valuable art field. The key is in working on the texture. In defense of the tactility, materiality of the object and physical essence in the digital and posthuman era. In an uncommon seriousness, she approaches her own work and artwork. In professionalism and firmly grounded ambition of the concept, but equally in the highest standards of its realization and organization of the text and visual material, characterized by high graphic culture, sophistication and precision of expression, and courageous research penetration into other dimensions of perception, both literally and in the most widely understood sense of penetrating the premises of a demanding act of art.
An art object – the book “The Invisible Wave”, otherwise created from the analyses of Virginia Woolf’s famous novel “Waves”, can only be experienced in the gallery, public, exhibition space. The three existing copies of this book-object clearly position this work in the space of contemporary fine art. But like any book, and especially empowered with tactile quality, this facility, like every book, allows for the intimate experience of each side. As with most books as art objects, there is a kind of expectation here, a narrative stimulation, on the basis of which we eagerly but also carefully open new pages of the book and successive visual worlds.
Due to Braille transcription, visually impaired people can follow the text. However, based on the relief solutions of the composition forms of each side individually, the audience can expand the field of sensory sensations in the experience of this piece and enrich the channels of communication with it. It certainly complicates the experiencing of an art work and a much wider audience.
Attention should also be paid to the fact of the poetic control of new technological capabilities demonstrated in this section. Until recently, such embossing technique would not have been possible. But due to new printing operations, we have received a work that brings together 45 pages, or 45 graphic and relief statements, executed with equal care and serious thought. High artistic culture is clear not only by the convincing compositional solutions of each side individually, by the precise balance of volume and lines, by the bright and ringing coloristic sensibility, but also by the sophistication of the equipment of the work as a whole.
The “Invisible Wave”, as a kind of capsule of successive visual order, brings back the categories of seriousness, dedication, professionalism of performance and poetic experiment to our scene.
Anica Tucakov
Dragana Kuprešanin was born in 1982 in Belgrade. She graduated from the College of Fine Arts and Applied Arts in Belgrade in 2005, and then at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 2008, at the Department of Applied Graphics, Graphic Design. She obtained her specialization in drawing in the Painting department at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 2011.
She has exhibited in dozens of solo exhibitions and participated in hundreds of group – national and international exhibitions, festivals and art colonies at home and abroad. She is a grantee of several state and private foundations. She has won numerous awards in the field of fine and applied art (drawing, design, comics). She has been working as a freelance artist from 2012 to 2018. She is a Member of ULUPUDS, ULUS, USUS, UFUS and UFAS.
She has been involved in alternative comics since 2004. From 2008 she has been researching comics and frontier media that use conventions and the language of ninth art. She is a PhD student at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, where from 2014-2016 she was a teaching assistant of Drawing and Painting. From 2018-2019 she was an associate of art field at the
College of Fine and Applied Arts (Vocational Studies) in Belgrade, and since 2019 she has been an assistant at the Higher School of Belgrade Polytechnic, of subjects in the narrow field of Graphic Design.
contact: kupreshanin@yahoo.com
The exhibition will be open until June 6th – Mon-Friday 1pm to 8pm, Saturday 10am to 3pm.