Annual Exhibition of the Painting and Graphic Section of ULUPUDS

The Museum of the City of Belgrade, Princess Ljubica’s Residence, 8 Kneza Sime Markovića Street in Belgrade, and The Association of Artists in Fine Arts, Applied Arts and Designers of Serbia (ULUPUDS) is pleased to present:

Annual Exhibition of the Painting and Graphic Section of ULUPUDS

7^th – 20^th November, 2023

The Association of Artists in Fine Arts, Applied Arts and Designers of Serbia organizes the Annual Exhibition of painting and graphic arts, which, through the presentation of artistic concepts and their elaborations in diverse media, techniques and formats, aims to provide insight into ways of thinking about the very concept of artistic presentation.

The Annual Exhibition, showcasing the individual artistic creativity within the framework of contemporary aesthetic, anthropological, cultural, political, economic, feminist, historical and sociological dimensions, aim to examine the expressive capacities of contemporary Serbian artists dealing with technologically and materially complex ideas.

One of the featured works is Katarina Andjelkovic’s digital graphics, The Levitation Scene, which is a part of the decade-long drawing project called War [Un]Story.

Katarina Andjelkovic, *The Levitation Scene* (from The Sequence of explosion of architectural orders: patterning of relations). Digital graphics, 76 x 55 cm, 2021.

Katarina Andjelkovic’s digital graphics The Levitation Scene has championed a decade-long drawing project War [Un]Story. The author of this collection has offered an aesthetic reflection on the aftermath of war by appropriating the concept of architecture as a visual resource to (un)tell the apocalyptic scenario of NATO-sanctioned bombings of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A series of digital graphics deal with an aesthetic reflection on political bodies and conditions, asking how they have re-territorialised the material reality of the Serbian Military Headquarters in Belgrade (Generalštab building, architect Nikola Dobrović, built between 1956 and 1965) as a cultural artifact into the performativity of its political function. The project is seen as an opportunity to rethink political power through the analytics of physical sciences. It is revealed as a type of image which, instead of reproducing architectural reality, rather produces new perceptions of the event through the power of the energy and forces war unleashes. To animate the viewing encounter, the author chose to transcribe the energetic event of explosion into visual forms. Material decay of the building granted access to the immateriality of perceptual fields and delineated a multi-layered untold story in a fusion of energy (the fundamental concept in physics), power (the fundamental concept in social science) and transformation. The resulting choreographic notations can be registered and apprehended through the universe of image representation that negotiates physical boundaries by energy and forces. In Boccioni’s early twentieth-century references to the ‘electric theory of matter’, according to which matter is only energy, the exhibition shifts away from representational images to a more abstracted non-representational forms, the fragments of broken structure that are represented in a flow, bearing a striking resemblance to electrons in their ‘bareness’ or lack of materiality.

About Katarina Andjelkovic

Katarina Andjelkovic, with a Ph.D., M.Arch.Eng., M. Applied Arts, is a theorist, practicing architect, researcher and painter. She is a high-skilled draftsman, writer and researcher. Andjelkovic is simultaneously engaged in architectural practice, teaching, and research. Katarina’s research, writing and teaching, focus on how ideas can be translated across different media, crossing architecture, visual arts and film. In Spring semester 2021, Katarina is the main instructor of the HAND-DRAWING COURSE: THE FACE[S] OF ARCHITECTURE at SMT New York in New York City. She served as a Visiting Professor, Chair of Creative Architecture, at the University of Oklahoma U.S.A., Visiting Lecturer at Coburg University of Applied Sciences – Faculty of Design (Department of Architecture) in Germany, Institute of Form Theory and History in Oslo, Institute of Urbanism and Landscape in Oslo, Norway, at The University of Belgrade – Faculty of Architecture. Katarina is guest-lecturing and mentoring at Master Studies of TU Delft – Faculty of architecture and the built environment, Doctoral studies of AHO – Oslo School of architecture and design, FAUP Porto, DIA Anhalt Dessau, SMT New York, and Bachelor studies of ITU – Istanbul Technical University. She lectures internationally at conferences in film, photography and architecture, urban space and visual representation, exploring architecture with image technologies: from film to VR and AR, modern aesthetics of architecture, film-philosophy, drawing research, teaching-research frameworks, artistic research, and visual culture in more than 35 countries in Europe, United Kingdom, North America, Canada, Australia, China, and South America. Katarina has published her research widely in international journals (Web of Science). She is a full author of the Preliminary Architectural Design, a national project supported by the government of Serbia. She won the Belgrade Chamber of Commerce Award for Best Master Thesis defended at Universities in Serbia in all disciplines. Katarina has published two monographs; an upcoming book chapter and several journal articles with Intellect United Kingdom, University of Chicago Press (U.S.), Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group (London, United Kingdom), Büchner-Verlag eG, Marburg/Germany, etc. During her Ph.D., Andjelkovic’s research stays were all at European universities in Copenhagen, Ljubljana, Porto, Dundee U.K., Brighton U.K., Dublin, Madrid, etc. Andjelkovic exhibited her artwork at 7 Solo Exhibitions and at more than 70 international architectural, fine arts, and photography exhibitions, including group exhibitions at Pall Mall Gallery in London, Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, MAAT Museum in Lisbon, International Biennial of Illustration ”Golden Pen” in Belgrade, Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, TU Delft in the Netherlands, the Museum of Applied Arts in Belgrade, the National Museum in Belgrade, Prodajna Galerija “Beograd” (Kosancicev venac, Belgrade), Gallery Singidunum in Belgrade, Stepenište in Art Education Center ”Šumatovačka”, Gallery of the Central Military Club, Suluj Gallery, Pavillion Cvijeta Zuzoric of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia, and Mala Gallery of the Association of Fine Artists of Applied Arts and Designers of Serbia. Katarina is a recipient of EDRA’S 2022 AMBASSADOR FUND AWARDS [California, U.S., Awarded in South Carolina], THE ULUS 2021 Spring Exhibition Award “INVISIBLE PORTRAIT” [awarded by Association of Fine Artists of Serbia], and won numerous awards for her architecture design and urban design competitions.

About The Museum of the City of Belgrade, Princess Ljubica’s Residence

The Museum of the City of Belgrade, Princess Ljubica’s Residence, 8 Kneza Sime Markovića Street in Belgrade, is one of the few preserved buildings from the time of the first reign of Prince Miloš Obrenović. Princess Ljubica’s residence was built in 1830. After restoration and reconstruction, the building became part of the Museum of the City of Belgrade in 1980, and in September of the same year, the permanent museum exhibition “Interiors of Belgrade houses of the 19th century” was opened. The display consists of a representative selection of fine and applied art objects from the collections of the Museum of the City of Belgrade. The objects were created during the 19th century as a product of Western European and domestic craft-art and industrial production. Today, the lower level of the building regularly hosts art exhibitions.