13th CERAMICS TRIENNIAL

Author: Biljana Vukotić, curator at the MAA

The retrospective Exhibition of Contemporary Ceramics Art and Design from the rich Collection of the Museum of Applied Art in Belgrade offers new insight into the works of artists whose creative imagination left mark on certain periods of the Yugoslav and Serbian ceramics art and design. The collection comprises the most outstanding and awarded creations of artists who excelled for their innovative aesthetic and artistic achievements since 1974.

On one hand, the collection documents the transition of artists’ interests related to small utilitarian ceramic ware, through looking for inspiration in traditional ceramic objects to mastering contemporary visual expressions. Employing the available ceramic techniques, there is growing attention being paid to researches of materials and forms in the last decades of the 20th century. This period is marked by combination of ceramics with other materials while first multimedia researches are noted resulting by comprehensible creations which are found in the works of younger generation of artists at the beginning of the 21st century.

The exhibition of works from the collection of the Museum of Applied Art offers insight to the visitors into works of artists covering a broad generation span having various aesthetic, stylistic, iconographic and technical concepts. There are represented works of those artists whose interests lie in ceramic sculpture, installation or multimedia researches. Works are also displayed both of artists who are best in manufacturing utilitarian ceramics as well as of those who use vessels as basis when creating sculptural forms. Part of the exhibition is dedicated to artists whose creative achievements marked a certain period of the Yugoslav and Serbian contemporary ceramics art and design but also to those who, due to the lack of markets, discontinued their work too soon. Historical distance makes possible new positioning in evaluation of aesthetic and artistic achievements in the field of contemporary artistic creativity. ( B. Vukotić in the exhibition catalogue)