ANTIMATTER

Organised by: Museum of Applied Art, Belgrade

Opening ceremony: Saturday, September 4^th, 2021, at 7.00 p.m.

Exhibition will be open through September 28^th, 2021

A solo exhibition, titled Antimatter, by the ceramic artist and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, Ljubica Jocić Knežević, PhD in Art, is organised within the MAA’s Salon of Contemporary Applied Art. The exhibition is a continuation of researches that are built on the artist’s doctoral project completed in 2018, but also on the stages in the artist’s work that had preceded it. By examining the boundaries between ceramic art and design in the context of modern technical and technological achievements, the Antimatter exhibition sublimates the artist’s all previous researches and connects them with her new works created in 2021. The exhibition set-up tries to point out the chronological and thematic origin of the artist’s experiment with porcelain in which she breaks with the traditional approach to ceramics. The intertwined structures, abstract forms, and contrasts of black and white porcelain create refined and elegant works of authentic artistic expression. By using different means of presentation, all segments of the exhibition are upgraded, and all with the aim of sending multi-layered messages to the audience. These works can be read as a reaction to globalism and the social alienation of the modern digital age. On the one hand, they represent a critique of modern society, and on the other hand, they celebrate it by pointing out the inevitability of its changes. The exhibition is also inspired by research into antimatter, duality and the contrast between good and bad, positive and negative, harmony and disharmony.

Ljubica Jocić Knežević completed her postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade (2001), and received her PhD Degree, having defended her thesis titled Ceramics and Screen – Elements of Heritage and Modern Digital Technology at the same faculty in 2018. She specialised in ceramic sculpture and ceramic techniques at the Development Division of the Tajimi Ishoken City Pottery Design and Technical Centre, Tajimi, Japan, receiving a Bunka-cho scholarship for culture. She has been a member of the International Academy of Ceramics IAC-AIC, under the auspices of UNESCO, based in Geneva since 2011. She was elected Associate Professor at the Faculty of Applied Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade in 2020. She is the winner of many awards, the most notable of which are as follows: the Bronze Award and Gifu Prefecture Award for outstanding results at the 11^th International Competition of Contemporary Ceramics – MINO, Mino Ceramic Art Museum, Japan; Merit Award, Biennial of Contemporary Ceramics, Yingge Ceramics Museum, New Taipei, Taiwan; SOFA SELECTS Award 2014, SOFA CHICAGO, Special Selections Chosen by Curators, Designers and Critics, Sofa Expo, Chicago, USA; Honorary Diploma, nomination of Monica Gas, Director of Westerwald Museum, Exhibition of European Ceramics, Westerwald Prize, Germany, and Chamber of Commerce Award – Premio Cersaie Di Edi. Cer SPA, Sassuolo, for the work that best combines ceramic sculpture and design, the 58^th Premio Faenza, International Museum of Ceramics, Italy. The artist has exhibited her works at thirteen solo and many group exhibitions in Australia, Italy, Spain, Japan, Croatia, Slovenia, USA, Great Britain, Austria, Romania, Korea, Ireland, Taiwan, Indonesia, Germany, Macao, the Netherlands and Serbia.