Consumerism defines today’s society, as well as the obsession with efficiency, productivity, underlined with the lack of empathy. It gets tougher for an individual to stay in touch with an inner self and to maintain a quality of the intimate relationships. People of today struggle with social relations and intimacy.
As I was born in SFRY (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) I had an opportunity to experience totally different cultural and social system. Socialism was all about the group – determined to remove any individualism and every single detail that distinguishes an individual from the rest of the group. In order to do that, Socialism was forcing people to “think” and behave in a same way, and on top of it – to live together. Huge blocks of buildings suddenly appeared all over the state. Up to two families – that are not related – were sharing the same apartment, offered by state as a free accomodation. In this system, social relations were developed easily, but everything else failed.
This series of paintings are my personal tribute to a better life. It is my own version of Utopia where I try to merge the best from both worlds – possibility for personal self-expression given by modern society and aspect of cohabitation and stronger social relationships that existed in communism and socialism.
I have depicted the buildings of Architectural Modernism (more precisely Brutalism(1)), using vivid colours on originally grey landscapes of concrete and stone.
