PINK NIGHTINGALE

Isidora Krstić

Vernissage 2.8.2019
Duration 3.-30.8.2019

Installation, dimensions variable. Plaster, clay, plastic, wood, chains, bandages, shredded office paper, woollen thread, reflective surface, wooden panel and wooden sticks, looped video (1’00”)
Looped sound in collaboration with Pieter Gabriel (Sleep Sleep, 20th Century) 5’58”

Paintings

Sofa (2019), acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm
Self-soothing (2018), acrylic on canvas, 120 x 100 cm

Have you ever closed your eyes, looked towards the sun and gazed into the back of your eyelids? You can see the bright pinkish-red colour of your blood through the skin. You are looking from the inside of your body outwards. The body is porous, it inhales – lets in, and exhales – lets out. At any given moment, we are surrounded by a mist of matter coming from our insides. We alternately dematerialise and recompose.
The work attempts to show how the duality of our existence is reflected in our body’s state – the pressure and release, being held and letting go, the pull and the push, subtlety and aggression. The viewer is both a witness and participant in a body’s unravelling.
And inside, our bodies are full of ‘artefacts’ – memories, past experiences, traumas and behaviours that all take some ‘space’ inside, whose presence may still persist to profoundly affect us. The work Pink Nightingale attempts to, through an almost ritualistic gesture of extraction, give my own ‘artefacts’ a form.

The exhibition becomes an archaeological field, not of old objects and bones, but of old experiences and memories. A pink light slowly pulses from the LED screen, emanating the pulsing of our neurological system and a looping sound piece is both meditative and slightly irritating, reminding one of the state just before sleep, where the senses are heightened and fragments of future dreams find their way, if only for a moment, into the consciousness.

Pink Nightingale borrows a part of the title from a well-known bird that sings at night. At night, we are closer to ourselves, closer to our subconscious and our fears are more pronounced, as if we know that as sleep approaches, we will connect with all that makes us alive and tears us apart.

Isidora Krstić


PICTURES of the EXHIBITION

 

Photocredits Mute Insurgent 2019


Isidora Krstić was born in 1987 in Belgrade. She is based in Vienna since 2012.

She received a diploma in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and obtained her Master degree in Art&Science from the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna. She has exhibited her work in venues such as Castello di Rivoli – Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Athens Photo Festival and LISTE Art Fair Basel. She also works on organising artistic projects and as a curator. She is a part of artist-run U10 Art Space (Belgrade) and a part of 280A artists’ collective focused on post-photographic practices based in Vienna.

Her work traverses artistic disciplines and often takes the form of an installation using a variety of media such as painting, drawing, sculpture, object, found objects, collage, video and sound. She is interested in investigating the messy and incomprehensible parts of the human condition and how our individual and collective memories, dreams, experiences and desires, informed by the societies and politics we are surrounded by, shape our existence.


Rosa Nachtigallen existieren nicht, sie sind meiner Imagination entsprungen. Jetzt sind Sie vielleicht auch Teil Ihrer Vorstellung. Mittels herauf beschwören dieses Fabelwesen schaffe ich Denkräume und sprenge Definitionen. Aber lassen Sie sich nicht von dem süßen Singvogel täuschen, er singt vom Trauma. Er singt von den Wunden und Kerben die Erinnerungen in uns hinterlassen. Mit der Arbeit Rosa Nachtigallen möchte ich einen Raum für Erforschung seiner selbst und Kontemplation eröffnen. Isidora Krstić

Isidora Krstić wurde in Belgrade geboren und lebt und arbeitet seit 2012 in Wien. Sie graduierte an der Kunstakademie in Belgrad 2011 und schloss 2016 mit einem Master in Art and Science an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst ab. Ihre Arbeiten sind Genre übergreifend mit kritischer, politischer Intension. Die Verknüpfung verschiedener Medien mit politisch historischen Hintergründen eröffnet zwei Ebenen, die miteinander umso stärker wirken, aber auch isoliert existenzfähig sind.