Dok su drugi spavali 2017

Curator: The overall tonality leans toward decay despite what might look like life springing forth, doesn't it? It's quite arresting, this clash of supposed opposites. Editor: This is Dragan Ilić Di Vogo’s 2017 acrylic on canvas work titled, “Dok su drugi spavali,” or "While Others Were Sleeping." Curator: Ah yes, perfect title! The sleeping is almost death-like here, though not wholly passive. Are we invited into a dream state perhaps? The work certainly operates according to its own strange dream logic. Look at the curious scattering of colour. Editor: Well, it certainly challenges traditional expectations regarding the nude. It looks like the figure is both adorned and violated. The splashes of colour interrupt the smoothness and the near perfection of the skin that’s usually rendered in paintings like this. The colour reads like…contamination. Curator: Absolutely. It's as if the canvas itself is undergoing some process, some form of becoming. The textures seem to crawl over the skin. This isn't a still life; it's a life cycle depicted. Editor: What strikes me are the elements of what one could call high and low materials, or rather subject matter. You have this beautifully rendered almost neoclassical figure contrasted against what looks like very gestural painting and rather unsettling elements of fauna and even a cat in the lower right corner. Curator: And note the dove – its purity, rendered also as almost brutally realistic as it contrasts against the organic material. Purity exposed and threatened. Editor: What does the artist want to say about materials like paint and how those are in relation to labor, process, production, or gender? What does he intend to tell us about what is supposed to be perceived as either good or bad? Curator: He forces us to renegotiate. It becomes about unsettling comfort rather than solidifying assumptions. A refusal of the passive, perhaps? Editor: Indeed. This painting leaves one with far more questions than answers, and that’s exactly where the work begins.