YESTERDAY'S HAY, 2020
Shredded paper, size variable
(...) Sladjan Nedeljkovic’s works on display at the exhibition Poetry of Dissolution [Poesie der Auflösung] continue the process of a ‘deprivation of meaning’ versus the (ecological) significance ‘creeping in’. There are for example those works selected by the artist from the series Untitled (Covering), (2009 – 2020). Newspaper pages spray-painted in layers of silver are displayed at the exhibition space. On first view they come across as monochrome-minimalist artefacts, however on each newspaper page the press photo remains without paint, clearly visible. Yet, as these photographs, exposed in such a way, lack the comment caption and thus the textual framework, usually clearly generating their context and to some extent their meaning – the photographs’ original (journalistic) intention and purpose is lost.
Nonetheless, also in this body of work, the thematic exploration with climate change occasionally shines through, as one newspaper page of Untitled (Covering) depicts the meanwhile iconic image of an ice floe floating in the water. Juxtaposed to this wall of photographs is a snow-white pile of paper snippets, cut into extremely thin strips, making it impossible to decipher any text written on them. The title of this work, namely Yesterday's Hay, (2020) reveals a lot: on the one hand, it directly hints at the exhibition site (former farmhouse), while on the other hand at ‘yesterday's snow’, subliminally referring to current environmental changes.
View of the exhibition Poetry of Dissolution
Kunstraum Tosterglope, 2020
(with Elena Gavrisch and Thomas Keller)
O.T. (COVERING)
Newsprint sprayed silver, size variable
Photos: Thomas Keller