‘We are Defending their Illusion'​ 2022 - 2023

​

"To rethink the world and seek meaning through a visual language. 

Where an inscribed understanding can be accessed through a form of abandonment to the process.

Allured by its forces of rule-making and rule-breaking, order and chaos. 

Perhaps then, each thought becomes a gesture and each gesture a thought. 

A beautiful paradox."

​

Bijanka Bacic

…

​

Paintings of energized lines and forms commingle in sensuous fields of colour, enticing the viewer into a surface that plays between the various paths of abstraction; the gesture, the figure and the geometric- a systemic process that seeks to understand what it means to paint in the act of the abstract today. 

Bijanka’s current series, ‘We are defending their illusion’, embarks on a playful exploration of the Grid- an instrument that has been contoured and stretched until only its armature remains. By juxtaposing this model against other forms of abstraction, such as the figure, the grid becomes a disruptive device that enables contradiction and limitation to coexist on a single surface. This deliberate interplay unravels the intricate relationship among the contrasting layers, a process of adding and obliterating; where a series of mistakes in blindness occurs until a type of light emerges. Within this complexity, the linear narrative is tossed into the air. We start to see the before as after, challenging our perception of time and reality as the viewer dances on the edge of coherence and disarray.

Aimed not to create pictures but paintings.

‘A Hundred Hues'​ 2023 

Exhibition at Long Story Short, NYC 

​​​

Paintings of energized lines and forms commingle in sensuous fields of colour, enticing the viewer into a surface that plays between the various paths of abstraction. Within her systemic process, a profound inquiry emerges, seeking to understand what it means to paint in the act of the abstract today. 

In her current series, ‘A Hundred Hues’, Bijanka delves into a dialectic interplay between romantic landscape paintings and geometric forms. Her artistic exploration is choatically orchestrated, as she skillfully harnesses the visual tensions and contradictory nature inhereted in the grid, stripping it back to mere horiztonal or vertical stripes. Despite the notable degree of control evident in their automated yet manually repetitive pattern, the stripes give rise to a significant level of aleatory accidentality. This effect extends from a deliberate gestural artistic intention to chance distribution. By juxtaposing this with illusionistic ‘landscape’ imagery, the painted canvas is transformed into a contested site. Here, the romanticized sublime can be both evoked and subverted, with the stripes serving as a visual grammar that contributes to the duality of illusionistic spatiality against the tangible presence of materiality. This exploration prompts a questioning of the landscape model and its stand with our contemporary condition- a place where temporal dislocation between nature and humanity is mirrored in the process, evoking a sense of nostalgia as one entity attempts to control or consume the other.

Through deliberate contradictions and nuanced dialogues, Bijanka’s paintings become a testament to the perpetual tensions between illusion and reality, form and formlessness. They weave a rich tapestry that challenges and captivates in equal measure.

Installation photos from the exhibition at LONG STORY SHORT NYC , Jan 2024