Autumn in Paris
Nina Zivancevic
There are a couple of significant art events in Paris each Fall such as FIAC, an annual art fair, and Carrousel du Louvre. But it is the smaller events such as the "Portes Ouvertes" and the local artist’s open studios that are the staple for any vital art scene. They are likely to influence the future development of any artist and burgeoning art movement, as they make an impact on both their participants and their potential collectors. Up in Beaubourg, there is one of the biggest retrospectives of the Dada movement yet organized, and I was happy to discover Duchamp’s letter in which he explained that Dada had also started as a marginal movement, a slap on the face of the public’s taste.
Down in the 10th Arrondissement and along the Canal Jemmapes, there were several brilliant shows of hundreds of anonymous artists who show their work through artists’ associations such as Paris Canal, L’Archipel, IRTS and OBA. Some of these artists are French, but most of them are ex-pats, international figures who’ve found their home in Paris. On display were a lot of interesting Latin Americans such as Chica Boyriven (Brazil), as well as Eastern Europeans such as Barbu Nitescu (Romania) and Dragomir Milan Glisic (Serbia). I called on Glisic in his studio in Rue Dagger and helped myself to a glass of red wine before I started contemplating his unusual canvases.
Dragomir Glisic’s vision is abstract and atemporal. His surfaces are a deep cosmic blue which invite us into a calm contemplation. This aura is present in all of Glisic’s paintings and drawings alike; it can be found in paintings of a calm and cold palette, or in those of a warmer colour scheme and busier subject matter. He often obtains the meditative, even scientific, dimension in his work by cutting the canvas vertically with different lines. The artist then adds endless numbers to these vertical planes. In the tradition of the great magicians of Op-art and Suprematism, Glisic invites us to consider the latest theories in physics, as well as the surreal fusions and fissions of planets and their surrounding universe. However, he contemplates them in such a joyful and colourful way that he actually manages to forget the scientific seriousness and rigidity of the said theories, which art at its best always does, and explores the profundity of things in a playful manner. His pinks and greens accentuate the black holes that we all may disappear into one day. These forms invite our dark premonitions of our bleak future.
