Untitled (Covering)

Untitled (Covering) is part of a series of the same name developed by Sladjan Nedeljkovic since 2009. It followed on from an earlier project, Constellations, carried out between 2007 and 2010. In both, the artist uses visual material gathered from newspapers, the internet, postcards, photographs and photocopied pages from books. He arranges images from different sources and periods into various configurations. The panels he constructs, sometimes grouped thematically and sometimes more freely, according to formal or aesthetic associations, bring to mind Aby Warburg’s famous Mnemosyne Atlas (1866 to 1929). Warburg’s panels, made up of sets of reproductions of artworks, were intended in broad terms to illustrate how symbolic ideas evolved in artistic and social imagination over time. Nedeljkovic’s series consists of several hundred pages of newspapers. The text on each page is carefully covered with silver paint, leaving only the printed images visible. At first the artist exhibited double-page spreads, but later began grouping them and attaching them directly to gallery walls using small magnets. Over time, he also reduced the number of photographic reproductions on each sheet. His work explores mechanisms of perception and how media images are received and interpreted. Without captions or commentary, can these images provoke deeper reflection or criticism, or will the empty space around them remain empty? Born in 1969, Sladjan Nedeljkovic studied at the École supérieure des Arts Visuels in Geneva between 1994 and 1998, and from 2001 to 2002 at Goldsmiths College in London. Since 2004 he has lived and worked in Berlin. His main interest is in images, both private and public, printed and moving, fictional and real. He collects them as prints, clippings, photocopies or in other forms. He then incorporates them into his artistic practice, uncovering the countless interconnected aspects of visual material production, exploring how they are perceived, and transforming them into coherent and precise works including video, installations and objects. Alongside his artistic practice, Nedeljkovic teaches videography, cinematography and experimental documentary film at the European University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. He has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. In Poland, the National Museum in Szczecin – Museum of Contemporary Art presented a broad selection of his works during the joint exhibition with Roland Schefferski, Seeing is (not) Believing, in 2022. Marlena Chybowska-Butler