RETROVISION

Exhibition curator and catalogue editor: Bojana Popović

Author of the text: Slobodan Ivkov

Graphic design of the catalogue, invitation and poster: Zoran Borenović

Exhibition collaborators: Miloš Dekić, Andrija Rančić

Public Relations: Milica Cukić

Council of the Museum of Applied Art’s Salon: Borut Vild, Ljubica Jelisavac Katić, Slobodan Jovanović, Ljiljana Miletić Abramović, Bojana Popović

Walking through the exhibition with the artist, on Saturday, 10^th, 17^th and 24^th October at 13.00.

At her exhibition Retrovision, specially designed for the Salon of the Museum of Applied Art, Snežana Pešić Rančić sublimates her family past and her contemplative insights. The exhibits, spatial and wall installations, and tapestries are thematically grouped into two separate set-ups titled Retro and Vision. They are conceptually united by a choice of scenes which, by depicting the artist’s personal history and spiritual reflections, simultaneously indicate the archetypal and the general. The exhibits invite the visitor to dialogue. They invite him/her either to sentimentally recognise their own life experience and tradition, or to ironize and challenge them, or to notice the threads that connect Snežana’s creative universe with the theories of fundamental sciences, as Slobodan Ivkov writes in the catalogue text.

In a visual sense, the artist conquers us with her masterfully stylized performances, with quick strokes that give the acrylic technique the transparency of watercolours and with her specific blue colouring. Painted on thin vlieselin, a fabric used for lining the inner side of clothes in the fashion industry, Snežana’s scenes emphasize the feeling of closeness and warmth, as opposed to modern and “cold” transparent PVC and silver foils from which her installations are also made. The blue thread, rich in its associative values, runs through the entire exhibition, as an element of individual works and as a basic “material” for a monumental spatial tapestry of striking redundancy.

Snežana Pešić Rančić (1957) graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, Department of Textile, in 1983. She began her professional career as a fashion designer at the Toplički Motivi company in Prokuplje (1984–1986), and then worked at the Beko company (1986–1990) and at her own SPR Design company, which produced exclusive women’s clothing, in Belgrade (1991–2006). At the same time, she pursued her interests in textile art, painting and fresco painting.

Snežana Pešić Rančić became a member of ULUPUDS (the Association of Applied Arts Artists and Designers of Serbia) in 1983, and in 2009 she was granted a status of an independent artist. Together with Maja Gecić, she has co-authored the concept of the international exhibition titled Pushing the Boundaries (since 2014) and realised the same as well as other exhibitions. She has been a President of the ULUPUDS Art Council since 2018.

The artist’s works are held in the collections of the Museum of Applied Art, the Ethnographic Museum, the RTS Gallery in Belgrade, the National Museum of Toplica in Prokuplje and the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts in Niš.

Author of the photographs: Veselin Milunović