BOB

Exhibition opening: Wednesday, 2 October 2019 at 19:00
The exhibition will be opened by the writer Jasminka Petrović

Exhibition Curator: Slobodan Jovanović, senior curator at the Museum of Applied Art

Organizers: Museum of Applied Art and Kreativni centar

Expert guidance through the exhibition:
Friday, 4 October 2019 at 18:00 and
Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 18:00 at the Museum of Applied Art.
Visitors will be guided through the exhibition by Dobrosav Bob Živković and Slobodan Jovanović.

The retrospective exhibition of illustrations by Dobrosav Bob Živković, titled BOB, is organized as a part of the Salon of Contemporary Applied Art of the Museum of Applied Art, in collaboration with the publishing company Kreativni centar. The exhibition will feature over five hundred pieces produced by Bob Živković in the course of the last thirty-seven years of his work.

The exhibition is accompanied by the book Basna o Bobu [Fable on Bob] by author Jasminka Petrović, illustrated by Bob Živković and published by the Museum of Applied Art, and by the monograph Dobrosav Bob Živković, published by Kreativni centar. The monograph contains recounts on collaboration with Bob Živković and on his creative work, written by Ana Pešikan, Jasminka Petrović, Ljiljana Marinković, Slobodan Jovanović, Smiljka Blažin, and Voja Žanetić.

The exhibition will be accompanied by workshops for children, pupils of secondary art schools, and students.

A virtual reality (VR) project, based on Bob Živković’s illustrations for publications Plavi kit [Blue Whale] by Arsen Diklić (2001) and Da pukneš od monstruma [Laughing Your Monsters Off] (prepared by Zoran Penevski, 2013), both published by Kreativni centar, will also see its premiere at the BOB exhibition.

“Dobrosav Bob Živković is a witty artist whose drawings make a basis for illustrations which are not only a visual presentation of the written text, but also a comment on or a visual complement to the text. However, his analytic illustrations do not offer a direct response to the text. Instead, they complement it or provide a new narrative. By exaggerations in his drawings and overemphasis of certain physical attributes of the characters present in his works for adults, he draws a grotesque caricature of the society we live in. On the other hand, he removes the excess details from the illustrations intended for children, giving his drawings a cleaner look. By doing so, he helps the youngest readers and viewers instantly grasp the gist of his works. In his drawings for teenagers, Bob Živković tries to stay close to the text, bringing it closer to teenagers in the best way possible. When illustrating books for children, he controls his urge for satire and creates appealing characters for children. He achieves this by reducing the amount of details, focusing on specific body parts, which are either magnified or minimized, depending on the topic. The grotesque retreats before his desire to bring the content of a book closer to children and, at the same time, present one of the possible worlds imagined by the illustrator, children, and grown-ups while going through a book or a picture book.”

From the text Hroničar čudnih pojava [A Chronicler of Strange Phenomena] by Slobodan Jovanović, senior curator at the Museum of Applied Art

Author of the photographs: Veselin Milunović