After three independent exhibitions in Montenegro, the artist Brigite Antoni will present herself for the first time in Ulcinj, where she lives, tomorrow in the art gallery of the Native Museum (Balšić Tower) in Ulcinj's Old Town. Antoni will present himself to the local audience with experiments in a "new" medium - a series of painting works under the collective name "The moon is wet and wild".
This cycle consists of nine acrylics on canvas, of smaller and larger format, and is complemented by a selection of miniature black and white drawings that were created earlier, and in addition to this, a subsequently conceived object in the space will be exhibited. The exhibition will be available to the public until October 28.
"Thus, a spatial installation was formed, which at first glance deviates from the expression by which the artistic speech of the artist is recognizable on the Montenegrin scene. The basic question of an observer familiar, or completely unfamiliar, with her previous practice could be the following: which 'moon' is it in Brigitte's constellation and why, in her visions, she perceives it just like that - as a black, spongy spot of variable dimensions and shapes, that is, as a shadow that reflects an almost invisible light from the surface of the canvas, while cutting a striking line of the horizon against the background of vivid colors in marked contrast?", points out art historian Marko Stamenković.
The new works of the young Montenegrin artist were created during 2019 in her, as she points out - living and, at the same time, working space - in a house surrounded by a huge cultivated garden near the urban area of Ulcinj or in the immediate vicinity of the confluence of the Bojana River with the Adriatic Sea.
Emphasizing the time and place of creation of her works, and especially emphasizing the connection between the water and sky environment in which she is and thanks to which the content of the exhibition was created, is not arbitrary, but crucial for the understanding of this exhibition, Stamenković points out.
“Why? Because art exhibitions are not only the setting of works of art in the exhibition space. This one, for example, is the product of a self-deprecating worldview of a thirty-two-year-old woman whose self-conscious and critical view of the world, no matter how unobtrusive, is discreetly pointed in a certain direction - in the direction of a predominantly patriarchal, macho and sexist milieu of social relations, politicized to the degree of banality that generally the social condition of one or more local communities is maintained at a long-term status quo level. The strange light that the 'moon' from Brigitte's paintings casts on the viewers actually falls on their state of inertness, passivity, staleness and immobility, or on that state of consciousness that keeps the mass of individuals in a tacitly generally accepted, but false sense of security. Like a black spot on the canvas, or its monstrous, nightmarish shadow, that deformed feeling instead of optimism emits only an unpleasant smell of mold - like an object at the entrance to an exhibition space", explains the art historian. Brigita Antoni was born in 1987 in Bar. She completed graduate and postgraduate studies in graphic design at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje, receiving an award for free drawing. Since 2013, he has been focusing on digital arts.
Bonus video:
