Andrea Ivanović Jakšić

ANDREA IVANOVIĆ JAKŠIĆ
by Gallery RIMA, Serbia

OPENING: Tuesday, 21 March 2023, 6 – 9PM

Andrea Ivanović Jakšić is a contemporary artist from Serbia whose art practice is connected to nature on intuitive, conceptual and material level. Her most recent works, from 2022/2023, are exhibited for the first time in DIT. Vienna and presented by Gallery RIMA.

Although Andrea graduated from the Department of painting (Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia), she never really practiced traditional painting. In terms of art media her works are hybrid art objects, between painting/drawing and sculpture/relief. They are intended to be perceptually approached to as paintings - basic support of the work is canvas or paper, and they are meant for traditional wall setting. On the other hand, the nature of Andrea’s object-paintings is extremely non-painterly – their abstract forms are modeled out of organic material produced in artist’s studio (and layered onto the support) and are bursting into tree dimensional space.

ABOUT ART
I have always felt an inclination to the matter, a closeness to the matter from nature.
I have always wanted to create a work that would be the real reflection of me as an inseparable part of nature.
A. J. I.

Intuition and Philosophy
Behind Andrea’s object-paintings/drawings lays her deep intuitive relation to existence, very close to ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Among many connections to Heraclitan philosophy, three main concepts are the basis of Andrea’s art: change and transformation as the only inalterable facts of existence, oppositions in permanent shifting, and the most important – inseparable unity of everything in nature. The whole world or nature is ONE regardless of infinite visible differences that exist within. Not only is man a part of nature, but he is its equivalent, so that everything produced by him/her is only a new difference in that unity.

Creative process
Creation of art is profoundly linked to Andrea’s handling of natural matter. The material of which the works are made consists of decomposed and moistened paper, mashed and applied in thick and heavy layers, and then transformed into abstract organic-like shapes. Natural materials (in other cases she uses also cotton, wood and wax) are submitted to controlled influences of natural elements – air, water and fire (moistening, drying, burning). At the same time, the created matter is shaped by extremely physical processes of hand molding, scratching, grinding, flaming, hammering. Andrea’s making of art is a long and patient process of fighting and hugging the Nature – applying her existential feelings in the very creation of art.

SHORT LIFE!
Andrea’s works from the series Short Life! (2022-2023) highlight all the main characteristics of her art: hybrid type of art objects between painting/drawing and sculpture/relief, (semi)controlled use of natural matter (materials, elements and processes), abstract organic-like forms, creation based on intuitive approach to existence but also conceptualized in Heraclitus’ philosophy. The title comes from the phrase “Life is short!” and defines artist’s recent life energy that made the process of creation more intense, faster and powerful - almost as a ritual for feeling the inner forces of life as present and strong as possible. Lines are extremely deep and densely entangled in the artificial yet natural tissue of Andrea’s work. Forms are swelled up and bursting with matter. While mightily inscribing her trace in the fiber of nature, Andrea creates a new entity of nature within the space of art.

ABOUT ARTIST
Andrea Ivanović Jakšić, (b.1979) has graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Department of Painting (class of Professor Milan Blanuša), in 2005. In her work, Andrea deals with a variety of media and different forms of visual expression. She has presented her works in solo and group exhibitions in the country and abroad (Japan, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria). Her works can be found in private collections (Serbia, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, USA) and the corporate collections of Philip Morris International Nis Art Foundation and Wiener Stadtische collection.