Everyone comes to Belgrade with the desire to take something, Goran Ćetković came here to bring us something, his personal author's hallucination and truth, these are the words with which the distinguished Serbian art critic and poet Dragan Jovanović Danilov opened the ULUPUDS "Singidunum" Gallery in Knez Mihajlova exhibition of award-winning Montenegrin painter Goran Ćetković (42).
"Voices of silence", the first independent exhibition of the bar artist in Serbia, attracted the attention of the audience, media and art critics of the Serbian capital, which is why Ćetković is extremely satisfied. At the opening, the visitors, who were so numerous that they even stood in front of the prestigious gallery in the heart of Belgrade, were greeted by Ivan Ivanišević from the Embassy of Montenegro, and curator Maja Škaljac Stanošević.
"This was my 22nd solo exhibition, the first in 2017 and in Belgrade, I tried to present myself in the best possible way. Everything was at a high level, thanks to the embassy that sent invitations to the diplomatic corps, so the diplomats also came, and I was especially glad that many fellow painters and art historians came, including Željko Đurović, Slobodan Vuković, Zoran Žugić, Tanja Nikolajević Veselinov, Marija Knežević, Gordana Tomić, Matija Rajković... The impressions are really great, I'm glad that the comments were all positive, the exhibition had a great response in Belgrade's print and electronic media, including the daily RTS", he tells "Vijesti" Ćetković.
After returning from Belgrade, he immediately returned to the studio. Ćetković works constantly, tirelessly, and says that an artist should not wait for a chance because the most important thing is continuity in work and consistency in painting, regardless of all circumstances. If they are maintained, continuity and quality "must definitely come to the fore".
"There is no excuse for not working, you are either in it or you are not. The urge to paint has always existed for me, thinking about life, man and his creation, these are the motives from which I draw inspiration", says Ćetković.
The names of the works round off the representation of these images to the viewer: "The Tooth of Time", "The Philosopher", "Hunger", "Loneliness", "Nausea", "Between Two Worlds", "Bitterness, poetic and very dramatic at the same time, according to the author, grow after the very act of creation, after a long reflection and observation of the painting after its completion, "when all the pieces are put together and I see what I actually did".
"This again says that there is a lot of unconsciousness in my work, that I embark on a creative adventure without a map. In my painting, nothing happens according to plan, but spontaneously, things open up during work, I surrender to emotion, and the subjects I paint, I have been following since my student days, I am dealing with that other side of human life. Every day I am in the studio with pictures, sometimes I just observe and analyze them for hours, sometimes it is more useful for the author than the painting itself", adds Ćetković.
Due to circumstances, he creates almost exclusively at night, which is visibly reflected in the contrast of light in his paintings, which Danilov assessed as "emerging from the Mediterranean darkness". Ćetković says that it is a kind of author's wall for him, because he insists on the play of life through light. From such a prism, convincingly and suggestively, on the fly and brutally, he paints the alienation of modern man in the age of fast life, his cocooning with computers and the Internet. Ćetković is, in a way, a painting of Camus' Meursault transposed into the XXI century!
"It's all based on an expression that carries expressiveness, partly elements of fantasy, as noted by art critics, I deal with figurative painting that has an almost abstract expression. I use color to indicate feelings, and that's why the painting is sometimes reduced to a stylistic sign, and something new always opens up with it, depending on the distance from which it is viewed. From close proximity, it is completely abstract, the more you move away from it, it acquires three-dimensionality and plasticity, you can glimpse its form, feelings, emotion more and more. That's what's important to me, that the painting works constantly and that it gives signals - signposts to the observer", Ćetković approaches his work, who is planning more exhibitions in 2017, first in Novi Sad, then in Montenegro. Human emotions will continue to be under his author's microscope, which is why his colleagues in Belgrade told him that he "paints even the thoughts in his head" on his canvases.
"Painting is a way of life, as you live, so you paint. The environment in which I paint is very important to me, the works created in an open space - female nudes and landscapes, have the same handwriting, but their form is almost abstracted, reduced to colored spots and a play of warm and cold colors. That's why lately I've been using acrylic colors more and more, they suit my sensibility and way of working, because my paintings are created in one breath, and with them I painted some of the most current and most notable paintings, such as 'Loneliness' and 'Hunger', he concluded is Ćetković.
Dejan Đorić: Here is a painter who believes in painting
Inspired by the "Voices of Silence" exhibition, one of the most prominent and influential Serbian art critics and essayists, Dejan Đorić, wrote that these canvases "like salvation from contemporary noise and anger" soak up silence and loneliness.
"They soak, because Ćetković's face is leaking paint.
With this young art ascetic, the painter Robinson, the colors flow from the characters because they are like Giger's alien monster Alien.
We don't know if he paints characters or personalities, it's hard to determine with him, but some of them are wet as if they came from a cave, as if they were seen in the first waters, at the bottom of an enchanted lake, the Wolf's Den or Lucifer's well, where did they come from there is an ascent to light and image.
Here, then, is a master from the mythical homeland, from the heavenly and hellish Montenegro, where the strong, fragrant and enticing sunny Mediterranean meets the lunar mountain karst. Here is a painter who believes in painting and does nothing but return to the original, here is a man," said Đorić.
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